


Paint It Black and Take It Back

by macaroni_meangirls



Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Blood, Explicit Language, F/F, Gore, Graphic themes, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, dark themes, explicit violence, read with caution, trigger warnings posted before each chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2020-06-29 06:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 24
Words: 35,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19824586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macaroni_meangirls/pseuds/macaroni_meangirls
Summary: The world caught on fire. And the aftermath isn't much better.





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [baby_panda20](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baby_panda20/gifts).



> @baby_panda20 is tagged in this because she's literally the best. You have her to thank for my motivation to finish this project. Go read her work and give her a sweet comment. Thanks for everything, Local Janis. This one's for you.
> 
> graphic depictions of apocalyptic themes  
> outing mention

The world caught on fire in 2020.

They were seniors in high school.

It was technically bomb war, but they all call it the Blaze. North Korea wiped out the East Coast in a single morning. The U.S. responded by razing the smaller country to the ground. Russia sought vengeance for their ally, and the whole world dissolved into a broiling stew of primordial flames and smoke.

Somehow they survived. The six of them took cover in the boiler room while the world burned around them. Janis still hears the screams of her classmates burning around them every night in her sleep. 

As near as they can tell, they’re all that’s left from the city, at least. But not worldwide. Their little motley group were not the only ones to survive the Blaze.

They were struggling nineteen-year-olds, sloshing through the overheated sludge that was once their home, their faces burned and lungs charred, hearts sunk further than they ever thought they could fall. And then they heard the voice, reverberating through the air as if by magic. _My name is Sin-Kana. I am the new empress of the country formerly referred to as the United States of America. I don’t know how many of you are alive. But I know you are out there, and I know that you can hear me. We will rebuild our home. We will raise it stronger and better than before. In one short year, my people have established this system of communication and launched preliminary relief efforts. I can do this, and so much more for you. All I ask is that you follow me._

And most of the remnants did. Even they did, at first. But then people started disappearing. Plucked away as if by invisible claws, they were never seen again. They quickly drew the connection that those who disappeared were those who spoke ill of Sin-Kana’s absolute monarchy. Then an issue went out for all weapons to be surrendered, the Chess Force declaring that no weapons were needed in Sin-Kana’s world of absolute peace.

The final straw was the Chess Force invasions. The Chess Force - the massive, well-armored, ever-growing army of Sin-Kana’s dictatorship. Named for their black and white bulletproof armor, the Chess Force were better-armed, better-trained, and better-prepared than any small, newborn village struggling to return to some form of civilization. It started with a few soldiers. Then a squad. Then a whole battalion invaded, drinking too much and throwing their weight around and pinching girls’ asses whenever they were forced to pass them.

People complained. Then they vanished. Gradually, people stopped complaining.

That was when the six retreated back into the swamp.

Northshore High, a private school set away from the city, deep in the swampy woods of Illinois, gated and locked to all but the students. To outsiders, the now-sunken, swampy marsh is a treacherous jungle. To the six, it is home.

There’s Regina, her hair much darker now that the dye has washed away, burn scars marring her once-flawless skin. Once the queen of the school, she’s now become the de facto leader of their little party. Gretchen, blind in one eye from the explosions. There’s a hardness to their little spy now, a set determination to exact payment for her lost eyesight in blood. Karen, her once innocent blue eyes fractured with the ghosts of her terrifying past. Karen doesn’t speak much anymore. But Gretchen grimly reported that she was attempting to calm Caitlin Caussin when shrapnel tore the girl apart before her eyes. Aaron, who no longer shows his teeth when he smiles. They’ve all nearly rotted anyway. He’s become the designated muscle of their little team, lifting and carrying for money to fund their little operations. Damian, who doesn’t dance anymore, limping heavily on the leg through which the shards of glass brutally ripped. He’s their medic now, his makeshift cane clicking the ravaged tile floors with every labored step. And Janis. Janis doesn’t even know how to describe herself, before or after. She’s a nobody. A floating head who draws the battle plans.

Defining herself as anything more feels like treason to her soul.

They rank themselves as insurgents. Sin-Kana ranks them as traitors. Twenty-two years old and a bounty on all their heads. Almost forty million Chess Marks in all. Their entire group could live on that for the rest of their lives and still die with every one of them disgustingly rich. Any hope they had for allies is gone. Only six, trapped in the swamp, checking the flood marks and making bullets out of scrap metal and trying not to think about what life was like before the Blaze. Life becomes a desperate monotony, their lives hanging fraught in the balance of the constant, repetitive events. Wake up as the sun rises. Shoot whatever they can find in the woods. Remove the bullet to remeld later. Eat quickly. Make bullets. Disguise themselves. Dissolve into the streams of people passing through the nearby little town Sin-Kana has built, centered around the trade of marsh plants. Try not to get killed. Come home. Eat whatever was left from the morning. Share information. Sleep.

Janis used to pray for monotony. No more excitement. No more changes. No more fake friends, no more lies. Just a simple, looping life where she could do what she loved and be left alone. Unbothered. Unhurt. Just her and Damian and her easel, carving out a little life together. Now she misses the life she used to have with all her heart. She was in trouble all the time and turned to things she wished she hadn’t and was outed by a vengeful senior whom she beat in an art competition, but she was safe. No Blaze. No fires. No bombs. No massacres. Monotony has gone from a dream to a terrifying nightmare she’d gladly give every drop of blood in her veins to awaken from. But nothing can break the monotony. They can do nothing; they can accomplish nothing. All their plans will fail. They have no hope, no future, and nothing to do but wait in terrified anticipation for the day that the Chess Force finally finds their hidden base in the forbidding, swampy marshes.

Until Gretchen brings home a tip that changes it all.


	2. A Rotten Tooth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning for death

“What do you mean, they haven’t killed them all?” Janis snaps, glaring at the Korean girl from across the table. “They’re all just conveniently lying low in what’s left of the woods where no one can see or hear them and have made no attempt to contact anyone? For three years?”

“I know what I heard,” Gretchen retorts, her remaining mahogany eye firing up at the challenge to her credibility. “And I heard that they’re not dead. It makes sense, Janis. What’s the point of shooting people down in a ditch?”

“Silencing them,” Janis shoots back, one hand resting as usual on the carving knife she salvaged from the cafeteria. “Dead men tell no tales, Gretch.”

“But living men speak, and what they have to say can be important,” Gretchen argues, eyeing Janis’s hand nervously. In three years, the artist has retrained her precise hands to throw her knife with deadly accuracy. Before the Blaze, the knowledge that her friends might fear her would have horrified her. After, the realization fills her with a grim satisfaction.

“So what? You think the wannabe Storm Troopers and their Darth Kana bitch-faced ass-fucker are wasting their time with a bunch of unwashed peasants from the outskirts of civilization? Those guys know how to pick cattails, Gretch. I’m sure the Empire is shaking in their stupidly patterned boots.”

Regina rolls her eyes, the tightened, bubbling skin stretching as she struggles to speak. “Janis, it’s been three years since the Blaze, not three hundred. Everyone who disappeared was alive before. I’m sure they had another occupation besides picking cattails.”

“Thank you, Regina,” Gretchen sighs, turning back to the table. “As I was saying, they’re not dead, or at least not all of them. I know that they’re being held in an interrogation camp. Better yet, I know where it is.”

Janis opens up her mouth to argue again, but Damian squeezes her arm, lifting it away from the sharpened knife. “Where?”

“What’s left of the Sears Tower,” Gretchen replies, tapping her dirt-caked nails against the scratched table. “I know, it’s close. A day’s ride on a cart. Disguises, a few Chess Marks from Aaron...it’s doable. Really doable.”

“What’s doable?” Aaron interrupts, running his fingers through his loosely coiled crown of hair. “What exactly are you suggesting, Gretch?”

“An attack,” Karen interrupts, her voice breaking roughly as her tangled, mud-caked blonde hair hangs over her fractured periwinkle eyes. “She wants to attack them. Because not enough of us are dead.”

“I think we can save a lot of lives!” Gretchen interjects, sweeping her deep brown hair back. Her face and hands are smeared with mud from posing as a rush farmer on the outskirts of the marshes. Before the Blaze, she never would have allowed so much as a chip in her nail polish. Now her hands are rough and calloused, her nails broken and rounded, all traces of polish long replaced by a combination of filth and blood. “There’s people alive in there, and dammit, they know stuff! Stuff they can tell us! We could build a goddamn army!”

“Or we could be sold out to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and her checker-print death eaters,” Janis retorts, casually beginning to pick out the grime under her own nails with the tip of her knife. “Forty million Chess Marks on our heads, plus probably a big-ass bonus for anyone else who actually does decide to join the Suicide Squad. If Gretchen’s information is right, someone’s bound to turn us in, and then we’ll all be buying Old McDonald’s goddamn farm, and I guarantee there will be no E-I-E-I-O about it.”

“My information is always right,” Gretchen snaps, her patience clearly starting to run thin with Janis’s constant taunts. “And what do you suggest inside, Janis? We’re sitting ducks out here. We can either die sitting in the wreck of our old high school or die trying to take Sin-Kana down. What would you prefer? You wanna die sitting or fighting?”

Janis doesn’t even know why she’s being so ornery today. She had the dream again, but she can’t go two days without the dream, and it doesn’t make her that much of a bitch. Gretchen has a lot of good points, and she definitely doesn’t deserve to be gone after the way Janis is coming for her today. But something is itching under her skin like sand in a shoe, and for some sick, twisted reason, irritating Gretchen is taking away the irritation from her own skin. The other girl has always been sensitive, mostly due to the constant comments about her eyes, her ethnicity, and her anxiety, and, as gross and sadistic as it makes Janis feel inside, that makes her an easy target.

“I’ll pass on being Joan of Arc, thanks,” Janis drawls, letting the words flow without thinking from her chapped, bleeding lips. Thinking costs too much, and digging at Gretchen continues to scratch the irritated itch that just won’t fade completely. “I’d rather die out here, in my safe little marsh, where I know what I’m doing and minimal casualties go down with me. We all know this is hopeless, Gretch. We’re six kids sitting out here in a swamp drawing little make-believe battle plans against the army twice the size of the population of the rest of the continent. The world’s already ended, and we’re all going down sooner or later. So you can keep your fancy little scheme to go prolong a few miserable lives a couple of extra months. I already know that we’re all fucking screwed.”

Gretchen opens her mouth, her yellowed teeth showing as she starts to retort, no doubt something about it being better to die honorable than a coward, but Damian cuts her off. “Janis, stop being a bitch. Gretchen, stop encouraging her. All in favor of marching on Sears Tower?”

Multiple comments about the extremely generous word “marching” run through Janis’s head, but for once, she holds her tongue. Taunting Gretchen has already given her a feeling eerily similar to that of a garbage disposal: unrepentant on the outside, but gross, sticky, and full of trash at the core. As much as she burns to keep lashing out until at least everyone else hurts as much as she does, that’s not fair to her cohorts. So Janis settles for staying silent and keeping her hands firmly at her sides. She’s the only one.

“It’s settled, then,” Damian announces, his hand wrapping around Janis’s arm tightly. “Plans start tomorrow. Meeting adjourned.” In an undertone, he continues, his nails digging into the soft skin of her arm. “Janis, a word?”

Fortifying herself for the lecture that’s certain to follow, Janis walks reluctantly alongside him towards an empty former classroom, the only sound between them the regular clicks of Damian’s makeshift cane tapping the marred white tile floors. He closes the door behind them as they reach what was once Coach Carr’s “Health and Human Sexuality” classroom. Janis shudders at the memory of the terrified freshman burning alive in this room, trapped by the fires outside every window and door. The screams of terror still echo in her ears.

Shaking away the memories as best she can, she braces herself for what she’s certain will be a long, one-sided conversation on how she needs to be less horrible to everyone around her. But once again, Damian surprises her. Propping his cane against the charred remnants of Coach Carr’s desk, he wordlessly pulls Janis into a hug, holding her tightly against his chest and rubbing her back slowly.

It isn’t until she’s being held that Janis realizes how much she needs to be. She lets the tension slip out of her shoulders and spine, melting into Damian and smashing her face into his shirt, breathing in the scent of smoke and marsh water infused into his tattered sweatshirt and trying not to let the stinging tears escape. Damian rocks her back and forth slowly, his large, calloused hand rubbing rhythmic circles over her back. They stand wordlessly together, Janis slumped against him, until his bad leg starts to shake and he has to let her go to reclaim his cane.

Already missing his touch, Janis settles for squeezing his hand, closing her eyes to restrain the persistent tears. Damian squeezes back firmly, rubbing slow circles over her knuckles with his thumb. “Feel a little better?”  
Janis nods shakily, her breath hitching in her throat. “Y-yeah...I guess…” She does feel a little better, but it’s already fading, sinking her back into the pit of hopelessness that climbs higher and higher around her every day, threatening to drown her. The levels of the depression fluctuate, and right now, the tides are around her neck.

“Dreams getting to you again?” Damian asks softly, squeezing her hand a little tighter for a moment. “You’re reminding me of last time…”

Janis nods again, trying to keep her voice from wavering. “Still having them. Still feel guilty. Still my fault. Not much has changed. Like that’ll ever change.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Jan,” Damian argues, shifting closer to her automatically. “None of this was your fault. You can’t blame yourself for what happened. It wasn’t your fault, and all it’s doing is destroying you from the inside out. You really hurt Gretchen today, and what for? You don’t feel any better, do you?”

Janis shakes her head, and means it. Baiting Gretchen hasn’t done anything for her other than make her feel gross and cruel. Pushing her pain on the hapless girl in the other room hasn’t taken hers away; it’s only made Gretchen hurt too.

“The only thing that’s gonna take away that pain is forgiving yourself for it,” Damian continues, slowly wrapping an arm over her shoulders to pull her in again. “It’s like a rotten tooth. You can hang on all you want, but all it’s gonna do is keep festering until you can’t take the pain anymore. And it’ll hurt to take it out, but when it’s gone, even if you miss the empty space, you’ll feel so much better. And you’ll come back to it sometimes, you’ll drive yourself crazy running your tongue over it, but in the end, it won’t be able to hurt you anymore. You have to pull out the rot, Jan, or it’s just gonna keep rotting, and you’re gonna rot along with it.”

Janis swallows hard, trying to bite back the sudden surge of tears that swelled in her throat at Damian’s words. “Sometimes,” she says thickly, forcing back the tears she hasn’t let fall since the day after the Blaze was extinguished. “Sometimes, it feels like the rotting one is the only tooth I have left.”

She slumps into Damian then, collapsing into his embrace and forcing back down the tears that desperately want to spill over. His arms wrap around her comfortingly, abandoning his cane once more to hold her, favoring his good leg completely to keep her held in his arms. Even when the tears fade away, Janis can’t bring herself to pull away from him.

Damian doesn’t try to make her.


	3. The Movie in My Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for explicit death description

Janis wakes up in a cold sweat, her damp hair sticking uncomfortably to her scalp. The crumbling building is silent except for the skittering of rats and the quiet scuffle of cockroach legs over the battered tile. The scientists were right; the disgusting little bugs survived, even thrived, during the Blaze and in the aftermath.

Revolted, Janis stands up slowly, brushing off some of the dirt that collects on the floor. Their half-hearted attempts to clean were useless, and they gave up after a few months. This place is barely habitable, and there’s no point in trying to pretty it up.

It’s still dark outside, rosy contrails of dawn just beginning to peek over the horizon. The others won’t awaken until the sun streams through the shattered squares which once were windows, but Janis can’t think of anything she’d like to do less than go back to sleep. Instead, she pulls on her splitting combat boots, wincing as her toes poke through the bottom of the shoes. They were old when she put them on for school three years ago, and now they’re literally falling apart at the seams. She needs new shoes - they all do - but shoes require both money and a visit to the village to purchase them. Far too risky until her shoes crumble off her feet.

Janis slips outside quietly, pausing by a small puddle of relatively clear water to study her reflection for a moment. All the water in the marsh is far too polluted for any use, either by after-products of the Blaze or the mucky stew of plants and amphibians that dwell in the shallows. Aaron and Regina usually take the job of fetching water, carting it back from the one clear river in the area. They have enough to drink, but no extra, and definitely none to spare for such a luxury as bathing. Once what they estimate to be a month, they dip rags in the water barrel and wipe away as much dirt as they can, but Janis’s hair is still always caked with mud and matted with knots, a far cry from its former glory. 

She used to take such good care of her hair. She washed it every day, combed it out painstakingly, conditioned it to be soft and shiny. Now the blonde streaks she prided herself on are gone, and she’s left with a tangled mess of filthy brown matts. 

Janis half-heartedly combs at her hair with her fingers for a few moments, more to kill time than anything else. After only a few swipes, her fingers are streaked with mud and she surrenders, tying her hair up in one thick ponytail as usual to disguise from herself how wild it’s become.

The pool reflects a distorted version of her face, rippling and showing her awkward proportions, but she still gets the gist. In the three years since the Blaze, her face has grown sharp and narrow, her cheekbones prominent and cheeks hollow. Her eyes are sunken into her head, a wild, feral look fracturing her gaze. Her clothes are ripped and torn, her pocket full of colored gel pens replaced by a makeshift strap holding a brutally sharpened kitchen knife at her hip.

No one from her old life would recognize her now. Janis isn’t even sure if she would recognize herself. The look in her eyes frightens her. She looks old and angry and dangerous. 

She never thought she would describe herself as dangerous before. Funny what the apocalypse can do to a person’s self-perception.

Janis shakes her head quickly to clear her mind, stepping away from the puddle. Staring at reflections is a waste of her time. They’ve all changed, anyway. Aaron used to keep his hair close-cropped to his head. In three years, he’s grown a medium-length afro. Gretchen is blind now, one eye burned and blinded by the flames that ravenously licked up the world. Damian is lame. Regina is burned. Karen has forgotten how to smile. She has no right to complain about something like an expression.

Searching for something useful to do, Janis checks the water barrel, marking the level of the liquid inside the oaky wood. Low. As usual. She dips in the cup, pouring it into the water bottle she salvaged from the remnants of the cafeteria. The clean, cool liquid soothes her dry, dusty throat. Careful to pace herself, she takes a few small sips before replacing it into the small blue pack slung over her shoulders. 

They started trying to grow their own marsh plants last year, noticing that Sin-Kana’s production quotas were rising and the plant populations in the easily reached portions of the marshes were decreasing. The fence built around the small sector is crumbling yet again, providing an entrance for hungry animals who will decimate the few cattails they’ve managed to coax into growing. With her knife, Janis slices down a branch from one of the cypress trees growing in the shallows. She settles comfortably onto a rock jutting out over the shallow, vegetated pools. Working by the light of the thin streaks of sun just starting to climb over the horizon, she strips away the bark, listening to the chirping of the frogs as she works. She carved every fence pole herself when they first started the agricultural experiment. Her hands are practiced as she methodically strips away the bark, sending dark curls tumbling silently into the swampy pool below her.

Her stomach growls ravenously as she works, pangs of hunger spiking through her gut. She ignores it, her knife sliding skillfully over the branch. The others will be awake soon enough and they’ll figure out what to do for food.

After what feels like an eternity, the others are outside, hands on the guns they traded for in the early invasion or the knives they appropriated from the kitchen. Gretchen even has a bow, somehow having managed to convince an arms dealer - he’d formerly owned a weapons range before the Blaze - to give it to her in exchange for a bag of beef jerky. “Thank God,” Janis calls, jumping down and tucking her fence pole under the rock to finish it later. “It feels like my stomach is eating itself!”

“You didn’t have to wake up before the crack of dawn,” Regina retorts dryly, rolling her eyes heavily. “We need all the energy we can get if we’re planning today. I vote we catch frogs.”

Gretchen makes a face, deliberately avoiding Janis’s eyes. “Frogs taste like chicken had a baby with a mutated tilapia and then it drowned in pollution.”

“But they’re high-energy,” Regina shoots back, digging the small net - made out of a pair of pantyhose and a miniature tennis racket - out of her own pack. “Cattails just don’t have the same power to them.”

“But cattails don’t trigger my gag reflex,” Aaron mumbles darkly, catching Janis’s eye. They were together when the Blaze started and throughout the whole shitshow, and it’s brought them closer together. They share the same sense of dark, cruel humor at other people’s expense, and while it definitely doesn’t earn them any extra love, it’s at least given Janis someone to laugh with every now and then.

Regina glares at them, clearly realizing that, even though she’s right, they’re not going to leave her alone. Instead of responding, she clambers over the rock, swishing her net through the water and expertly hooking a small green amphibian. “Bon appetit, bitches.”

In half an hour, they’re pulling gutted and cooked frogs off the small fire, spearing them on sticks to hold them. Janis bites hard into hers, having grown used to a diet of marsh plants, whole frogs, insects, and the occasional rabbit or beaver. “Mm...the delicate flavor of aquatic chicken.”

“Janis, for once in your life, close your big, flapping mouth and try to leave it that way for more than a nanosecond,” Regina snaps, chewing on a frog leg like a drumstick. “Sears Tower. We’ll need passage for six on a traveling cart to get there. How much are we estimating?”

“I can catch us a ride on a cattail cart into the city for four Chess Marks,” Gretchen replies, picking disgustedly at the frog. “I have one and Aaron has a half. I can earn another one or two today by selling cooked frogs at the trading hub.”  
“Anybody else have a Chess Mark?” Regina asks, her gaze sweeping the group and resting just a second longer on Janis, who pretends not to notice by fixating her gaze on her frog.

The coins burn hot in her pocket, a surge of guilt rushing into her core. She has six Chess Marks sewn into the inner pocket of her tattered green jacket, hidden from sight. She’s been saving them since Sin-Kana came to power, collecting a few cents here and there for little odd jobs. Six Chess Marks could be huge to them. They could eat for a week on that money, buy something larger, like a piglet or a hare. But as guilty as she is, Janis refuses to give up her precious coins. She’s not sure what she’s saving for, but the Chess Marks are desperately important to her, signifying some kind of control, some kind of possessions. So she stays silent, gnawing on a strip of frog meat and avoiding Regina’s accusing gaze.

“Fine,” Regina sighs, her gaze flicking to Janis once again before settling back onto the frog. “We need more water. Aaron, you and I can haul that today and then you can go try to earn more Chess Marks?”

Aaron nods agreement, his cheeks bulging with his mouth packed with too much frog to speak. Regina gives him a disgusted glare before turning back to the group once more. “Janis, fix the fence and then start looking for any surviving books on the Sears Tower. I want the most extensive report you can give me by tomorrow. Damian, start gearing up sickbay for a lot of injuries. If this is a torture base, they’ll be alive, but barely. Gretchen, try to find out what you can about what’s happening in the abandoned sector of the city. Karen, we’re out of cattail bread, make some more. Everyone clear?”

Everyone nods, Janis deciding to keep her mouth shut. She doesn’t want everyone to hate her, but it keeps happening, no matter what she does.  
She checks her pack, wincing at the low supplies. She has nothing but her water bottle, her makeshift blade sharpener, an extra knife, a small roll of cattail bread, and the thin locket she carries everywhere.

Shoving the locket away underneath the water bottle so that she doesn’t have to look at the delicate silver chain, she pulls out the lump of cattail bread, wincing as she studies it. Using a mortar and pestle made from a metal bowl and the handle of a knife, Aaron discovered that cattails could be ground into a fine powder, which, combined with water and a bit of ground rushes for flavor, forms a kind of crumbly flatbread over heat. It’s not exactly a delicacy, and it rots quickly, but it provides enough nutrition to keep someone going for a day if food is unavailable.

Finding only a few moldy spots, Janis shoves it back into her pack, zipping it shut again to avoid getting another glimpse of the locket. Shaking her head again to try to knock away the memories filling her mind, she clambers back onto the rock, her frog churning inside her, and returns to carving her fence post.

\--------------------------------------------------------

It takes three days to raise two and a half Chess Marks for passage on the cart. In that time, Janis manages to scrape together a few passages on the Sears Tower from the fire-ravaged remnants of the school library.

“It’s one hundred and ten stories tall,” she says roughly, rubbing at her heavy eyes in a valiant effort to keep them from closing. “We’ll need a full day to search it, it’s fucking massive. It’s made of steel, which is why it’s still standing. By some miracle it didn’t take a direct hit. The rest of the metropolitan area wasn’t as lucky. It’s the only building of any importance in the area. Ideal for a prison situation. No one to hear the screams.”

Karen shudders at her words and Janis feels more than one glare burning at her, but she doesn’t react. Being a bitch isn’t even something she has to think about anymore. The words spill effortlessly from her mouth, and what scares her more is that the guilt attached to her cruelty is slowly, gradually dissipating. 

“Anything else?” Regina asks impatiently, drumming her dirt-caked nails against the table. More time than they’d like has crept past as they’ve been struggling to collect the needed funds, and Regina’s patience grows shorter with every minute that slips by. 

“It’s not exactly like I have a font of resources on the goddamn Sears Tower,” Janis snarls, not even sure why she’s firing up so quickly. “I did my best, Regina. If you think you can do better, be my fucking guest.”

“Janis, that’s enough,” Damian inserts, scooping up her hand under the table and rubbing slow, calming circles over her knuckles with his thumb. “Regina, stop digging at everyone, we’re all frustrated too. What else do we need to do?”

Something about Damian’s voice is calming and rational, able to defuse any situation. Regina relaxes as well, shaking her hair back and turning to Aaron. “Are we packed, prepared, and ready to leave? Water barrel filled? Bread stocked?”

Aaron nods, his mane of tightly coiled hair bobbing along with him. “Karen made three days worth of bread for each of us. Water barrel is filled. Packs should be full. I asked everyone.”

Janis subconsciously tightens her grip around her pack, playing with the one remaining button. This bag used to hold her art supplies. Now it’s become her lifeline. If she loses this bag, she dies. And dying feels like a betrayal to all the people who could have taken her place in the boiler room.

When she dies, she wants it to mean something. Something other than that she can’t keep track of her belongings.

Gretchen speaks up, twisting an arrow absently between her fingers, her bow hooked over the chair behind her. “I haven’t heard much about the tower...mostly because it’s top secret.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Janis snorts, hugging her pack closer. Damian’s hand tightens around her fingers, both comfortingly and warningly. “In other news: air is fucking invisible. What will she tell us next?”

“Fuck off, Janis,” Gretchen snaps harshly, finally snapping the cool displeasure she’s maintained when around Janis over the past three days. “We get it, your life sucks! If you hadn’t noticed, all of our lives suck too! And we’re all you’ve got left, so maybe consider digging your head out of your ass and listening to a word we have to say, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been up there so long your spine’s grown into a goddamn circle!”

For a moment, the entire table is stunned speechless. Then Janis shoves her chair back, sending it falling roughly to the floor and skittering into a wall. She throws Gretchen one look of pure contempt before storming out of the room, her pack bouncing angrily against her shoulder.

Behind her, she can hear the tapping of Damian’s cane. He’s following her, probably to calm her down and play with her hair and tell her more pretty things about rotten teeth and letting it go. Janis doesn’t want hugs or pretty things or fancy advice from someone like him.

Janis sprints up the stairs as quickly as she can. Damian’s leg can’t do stairs, especially not as many as he knows she’ll be taking. She can hear him calling for her to come back, but she ignores him, her heart pounding rapidly in her chest as her boots smack against the filthy tile.

Gretchen is right. She’s estranged everyone else in their little group, pushing them away so that they can’t feel anything for her. Even Aaron thinks she goes too far with her taunts and sardonic remarks. Damian is the only one who cares if she’s okay.

Janis flies into what used to be the art room, her personal safe haven. For the second time in three days, she wants to cry, but she fights the tears back, refusing to let them fall. She hasn’t cried in three years, and she’s afraid that if she starts, she’ll unravel completely amidst a flood of tears, broken beyond all repair.

She buries her head in her knees, almost recoiling at the scent embedded in the old, musty blue denim of her jeans. The smell may be awful, but she feels safer curled up, protected from the outside world, protected from what she’s done, protected from what happened to her life. If she doesn’t look, she can almost pretend that she’s still eighteen, finishing up her senior year, making plans to move to New York to attend the prestigious art school she’d been accepted to. She’d be laughing with Ms. Cherry, showing her the paintings she made in the class, asking for advice with new techniques. In the art room, she was always the best, always the leader, always the one who knew what to do.

But Ms. Cherry staggered out of the third-floor window with her whole body burning, falling to the ground and continuing to writhe in agony for minutes as Janis watched frozen, high-pitched, feral screams tearing apart her throat in a voice that didn’t sound like her own, before Damian dragged her away to the boiler room. And the prestigious art school didn’t even survive the first hour of the Blaze. And there’s no one left from her old art class to be the leader of. And all the paint was destroyed in the Blaze.

Janis blinks heavily, trying to force away the painful memories threatening to overwhelm her. Don’t think about it. That’s what she always does. Push it away, push it to the very back of her brain. Don’t think about Ms. Cherry, her beautiful floral print dress on fire. Don’t think about the sounds she made as she stumbled towards the window. Don’t think about the sight of her rolling around on the grass like a beetle trapped on its back, her bones splintered and shattered as the fire ate slowly away at what was left of her body. Don’t think about any of it. Let it all rot, and let it all rot away from her thoughts. If she pushes it far back enough, it won’t bother her anymore, she tells herself, rocking back and forth slightly as she hugs her knees. Push it to the back, and it never hurts the front.

Forgetting is the only thing left available to her that keeps her from losing her mind. All she can do is forget. But that’s almost impossible when she’s trapped in a cradle of painful memories.


	4. History Repeats Itself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vomit mention  
> torture mention

The cart rattles roughly over the dirt road, tying Janis’s stomach in knots. She’s never handled motion well, even on fresh-paved asphalt in smooth automobiles, and wooden carts are a recipe for disaster. Trying to distract herself, she turns back to the group, pulling out the plans she drew with the end of a burnt stick. “There’s a pier on the outskirts of Chicago, or at least that’s what I heard. We can stay there tonight and start collecting rubble tomorrow.”

“Collecting rubble” is the codename they developed to discuss the advance on the Sears Tower. There’s almost certain to be Chess Force guards listening for any mention of the tower, especially if the building is as critical to their regime as Gretchen claims. The six are disguised as builders, luminescent vests covering their clothes and mud smeared over their faces. According to the driver they paid, they’re simply looking for passage into the city to gather stone remnants for the purpose of rebuilding.

“One question,” Janis continues, wincing as the cart bumps through a particularly large pothole, her stomach lurching uncomfortably. “How do we plan to transport the rubble and shit back to the hub? Because we just spent all our coins on passage to Chicago, and it’s gonna be more if we have a fuckload of rocks with us.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Regina snaps, her own face starting to take on a slight green tinge as the cart jolts over a stretch of rocks. “For now, put your plans up and pay attention to our surroundings. I want to keep track of what’s around us.”

Gretchen is casually perched on the backboard, her good eye flicking back and forth like a small bird trying to avoid predators. “Chess Force,” she hisses suddenly, slipping off the headboard to sit next to them. “Checkpoint to pass into the quarries.”

Janis winces as the cart rumbles slowly forwards, and not just from the nausea. “What kind of fucking checkpoint?”

“They’re checking passengers,” Gretchen snarls in response, hastily burying her bow at the bottom of the straw. “Can’t tell about cargo.”

They scramble to bury their weapons and plans, pulling out their packs and the huge burlap sacks they’ll use to “collect rubble.” Janis shifts towards the edge, peering anxiously as far ahead as she can manage. “This is bad…”

“No shit,” Aaron snaps, kicking her roughly as he stuffs his pistol under a heap of straw. “Tell us something we don’t know, Sarkisian.”

Janis forces her reply back down, trying to wipe the terrified pallor from her face. A guilty look could kill them all. She smacks her cheek lightly, trying to pull herself together.

For someone who survived the apocalypse, icy claws of fear sink into Janis’s soul at the idea of dying.

She still remembers her hands, held in front of her, too shocked to put them down, not knowing or even caring if the crimson tide dripping from her fingers belonged to her or someone else.

Janis has lost everything but herself, and life is all that’s left for the world to strip away.

“Reason for passage?”

The sharp, cold voice jerks Janis out of her reverie as the officers glare down at them, their featureless black and white masks revealing nothing but shiny, beady eyes like those of a snake fixated upon their little party. Four of them, all armed with checkered handguns. Far too many for them to fight off, even without accounting for the far superior weapons belonging to the officers. 

“Rubble collecting, sir,” Gretchen speaks up, perfectly imitating the rough accent of the builders, hardening vowels and deepening her words. “On our way to Chicago. Heard there’s a lot of old rock to be found there.”

“Who’s your driver?” the lead officer replies, his voice clipped and professional. Janis wouldn’t have been more frightened if he’d screamed. The Chess Force officers have a way of getting to her...she’s seen how they take lives. The victims are pinned to trees, one hand nailed to each with a rough-hewn iron nail. Then the officers draw their knives, smaller, concealed weapons which they keep under their armor. In one clean swipe, they slice open the unfortunate soul’s stomach, tearing through skin, muscle, and organ, allowing the intestines to pour out in a gory waterfall of flesh. The blow is a fatal one, but an excruciatingly painful death is granted from the knife. Janis has heard screams rise for hours from the nearest execution wood. 

“Dunno,” Gretchen shrugs, her shoulders rolling back nonchalantly. “Some guy willing to take a few Chess Marks in exchange for a lift to Chicago.”

“How’d you get Chess Marks?” the officer continues, the empty sheet of metal stretched over his face looming menacingly over Janis. “You don’t exactly look like a rich bunch.”

“Took three days of work,” Gretchen answers warily, glaring at him with a hand on her hip. “We’re honest folks, we are. Honest work for honest coins.”

“How many was it for your passage?”

“Four Marks,” Gretchen answers, her hackles still raised at the insult. Through her petrified state, Janis can see how good she is at her role. If she didn’t know better, she’d buy Gretchen’s accent in a heartbeat, and her story along with it. “We’re only coming from the marshes.”

“Looking for work in the marsh hub? Not a bad place to start. The whole area is a wreck. Could use some good buildings.”

“We make the best buildings,” Gretchen boasts proudly, puffing her chest out slightly. “Finest in the country. Just need some more materials.”

“You’re quite the spokeswoman,” the officer says thoughtfully, his impassive mass looming over them like a vulture over a dying prey, sending tingling shudders down Janis’s spine. “What does the rest of your group have to say? How about you, girl? You look quite afraid, and only those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.”

After a moment, Janis’s heart jolts as she realizes he means her. Her already upset stomach tosses like butter in a churn as she gazes soundlessly into the featureless checkered sheet of metal that covers his face, flapping her lips silently like a fish.

“Don’t mind Mara,” Damian cuts in, easily giving Janis a fake name. “She’s not been quite right since the Blaze. Afraid of her own shadow, I swear.”

The officer ignores him, his mask aimed directly at Janis, trapping her like she’s been caught in a beam from an alien spacecraft. “Mara, is it? How old are you, Mara?”

Instinct screams for Janis to answer, slip on a persona named Mara, change her age, change her past, become someone other than the insurgent on a mission against this man, but she can’t make her lips move. She stares desperately up at the man, her jaw hanging open stupidly, too frozen to move. 

“Mara’s nineteen,” Damian intercepts, reaching hesitantly towards Janis to pull her in. “She’s really not right, she’s scared to death of the Chess Force...keeps thinking they’re gonna disembowel her or something. We tell her she’s crazy, but she doesn’t listen.”

“I’m not talking to you; I’m talking to her. The rest of you be silent. Mara, what are you so afraid of? We only kill criminals, and you’re not a criminal, are you?”

Janis shakes her head violently, her hair flopping around behind her and hitting her back from the desperation of her motions. But the rapid movement and loss of equilibrium upsets her stomach even more, and before she can stop herself, the little of their rations she’d eaten this morning is dripping down the front of the officer’s uniform. She lowers her head immediately, trying to create a posture of shame and horror and submissiveness, her heart thumping wildly in her chest as adrenaline floods her veins. Dreadful certainty fills her core like ice water, dragging her down and freezing her from the inside outwards. She’ll be murdered for disrespecting an officer, and then her friends will be arrested for being with her, and they’ll be found out, and they’ll be executed as traitors. Janis’s mind effortlessly paints a vivid picture of Damian bound to two trees, blood pouring from the holes driven through his hands by rough iron nails, screaming as his vital organs spill from his gut to the ground below, his head slumped down from weakness, forcing him to stare down at his own intestines rotting on the grassy floor of the execution woods. The thought nearly sends another wave of bile over the side of the cart, but she stops it at the last second, barely holding back as her throat burns viciously.

The officer stares down at her in disgust, shoving her backwards against Damian. “Take your idiot girl and get where you’re going. I’d advise putting a bullet through the worthless fool’s brain as soon as you get the chance. Some might even call it a kindness.”

And then they’re gone, and Janis can breathe again, panting heavily against Damian as he pats her back gently, trying to calm her down. 

She can’t erase the image of him screaming from her mind. She doubts she ever will.


	5. It’s Never Time to Say Goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for graphic death

The cart bumps forward in silence, all of them too shaken by their encounter with the officer to speak. Janis toys with her knife between her fingers, running the pad of her thumb of the blade she’s painstakingly sharpened to a wicked edge. Small drops of crimson blood drip from the lacerated pad, but she ignores the pain, barely able to feel it through the haze of numbness descended over her head. 

Everyone else is similarly on edge. Gretchen has fitted a rough wooden arrow into her bow, the weapon laid semi-casually over her knees. Aaron has retrieved his small revolver, one finger resting lightly on the trigger. Damian has his own knife removed from the makeshift holster strapped to his waist, gripped tightly in his knuckles. Even Karen has gathered up the large rock she insists on carrying around with her, tossing it back and forth between her hands.

Their wariness, however, comes to no point. They’re not stopped again after they pass into the next district, where much of metropolitan Illinois used to rise above the horizon. A small pang of sadness sinks into Janis when she sees the piles of rubble lining the sky where graceful buildings once rose, aweing her as a small child. She still remembers her first time in Chicago, at age six, staring up at the buildings that dwarfed everything she’d ever known. Never in her short life had she felt so small. 

The remnants of the buildings still inspire a feeling of tininess in her, but for different reasons now. Janis shakes off the sadness that threatens to drag her down even further at the pile of white iron poles that were once the Centennial Wheel as the cart rattles to a stop on the remainder of Navy Pier.

“Lake Michigan…” Regina whispers, the haunted awe in her voice echoing Janis’s painful reminisces. “I forgot how big it was…”

The water laps peacefully at the crumbling dock, the wind furrowing small waves over the smooth, glassy surface. It’s cloudy and dark and probably full of trash, but it’s there and it’s empty and it’s safe, and Janis hasn’t been clean in so long…

Without a second thought, Janis throws her jacket off, slipping the tattered remnants of her jeans and shirt to follow. Stripped down to her underwear, she ignores the confused looks on her friends’ faces and cannonballs directly off the pier.

She hits the water with a loud splash, the cool liquid flowing over her itchy, muddy body. She can practically see the clouds of dirt floating away as she rolls around in the delightfully cold water, rinsing away three years of accumulated grime and dust.  
Finally, she can’t breathe and she lifts her head up for air, treading water in the lake. “You guys coming or not?” Without waiting for an answer, she dives back under, running her fingers through her hair, shuddering as clots of mud and lice flow between her fingers, slowly working through the mats of filth and tangles.

After a few moments, she feels the aftershock of more splashes around her, her friends joining her in the pier. Janis rolls around in ecstasy, feeling wonderfully, miraculously clean. She surfaces for air, laughing like she hasn’t laughed since before the Blaze. Her friends are laughing too, giggling and shrieking, massive, muddy clouds blossoming through the water around them.

Janis paddles over to Damian, grinning at him. Her finally half-clean hair floats behind her, almost resembling its former glory as it tickles her back delicately. “We should just stay here forever!”

Damian opens his mouth to respond, his eyes gleaming joyfully. But whatever he was going to say is completely drowned out by a high-pitched, terrified feminine shriek, ripping through the air like scissors through wrapping paper. Janis spins at once just in time to see a massive spray of blood shoot up from the turbulent, splashing water, misting the air with deep scarlet.

Her eyes flick around rapidly, counting her friends. Aaron is stroking towards the disturbance, the water rolling off his back as his powerful arms propel him forwards. Gretchen and Regina are racing to the shore, probably for their abandoned weapons. Damian is shoving past her, heading towards the circle of turbulent, bloody water.

That leaves Karen.

Janis hauls herself upwards by the strength of her arms, using her legs to boost herself onto the pier. She snatches up her knife, immediately spring-diving back into the water, stroking the way her mother taught her to. Sleek and strong, not wasting her energy, slipping gracefully through the water like a seal, she cuts through the waves towards the bloody, shrieking pool.

Karen briefly surfaces, wailing desperately, blood running from her in streams, before her assailant drags her back under, sending up more bubbles as she fights her way upwards. Janis dives into the pool, plunging the knife downwards into soft, sleek skin, feeling something pop under the blade. Not even sure what she’s attacking so brutally, she slams the knife down again and again, poking desperately with her foot for Karen, trying to pull her up.

Aaron is the first to reach her, his strong, muscled arms diving into the water to reach for Karen. He pulls her out, lifting her up to give her air, but as he lifts her, her leg surfaces, mauled and mutilated by gaping, bloody holes. A set of massive teeth are still clamped into her flesh, the shark still locked around her. Without hesitation, Janis plunges her knife into its skull, grunting with the effort. The light dims in the shark’s menacing yellow eyes and it slowly sinks downwards, its teeth relaxing and freeing Karen’s leg. Janis frees her knife with a wrench, the blade still spattered with white brain matter.

Aaron is already kicking towards shore, using his legs to move himself forwards with Karen cradled in his arms, a red trail lingering behind them. Janis swims forward herself, cutting rapidly through the water. There’s so much blood in the water now, it’ll only be minutes before they’re swarmed by every other shark in the lake.

As carefully as he can, Aaron boosts Karen’s bleeding body out of the water, using his arms to push himself up. Janis quickly follows him, wincing with pain as a rocky crag tears through the flesh of her arm as she pushes herself back onto the safety of the pier.

Damian has already gathered his kit, kneeling over Karen’s body immediately, his hands quickly ghosting over her neck in search of a pulse. Janis stares down in shock at Karen’s limp form. Her body is riddled with massive, gaping holes, ripped to shreds by razor-sharp teeth. Her left leg is completely gone, torn off by the shark, leaving only a shredded stump of macabre flesh, studded with a chunk of red-streaked bone, snapped roughly in half by the force of the teeth. Her right leg has been mauled beyond all use, rosy strings of muscle hanging through the chunks of missing flesh. Small portions of her intestines hang through the gaping holes in her stomach, exposing her organs. Damian looks up at them after a moment, averting his gaze from Karen’s weakly moaning body, and slowly shakes his head. Wordlessly, he holds out a hand to Janis, knowing she’ll understand what he wants.

Janis stares at him in horrified shock, trying to reorient herself. She’s still dripping in a combination of lake water and blood, shivering in her underwear, her wet hair sticking to her body tightly. She’s too stunned to cry. A tidal wave of emotions tossing violently in the very core of her being, Janis slowly holds out her bloody, brain-splattered knife. Deep down inside, she wants to turn away, but she can’t bring herself to move, can’t even twitch her legs to turn around. She watches in fascinated horror, her blood running like ice through her veins.

Damian carefully wipes away the blood and brains, cleaning the blade so it gleams sharp and shiny in the fading sunlight. His hand briefly touches Karen’s cheek, one last weak comfort. Then he raises the knife, plunging it in one smooth motion into Karen’s spasmodically pulsing heart.   
Karen exhales one last time, letting out a quiet sigh, and her head falls limp, her blue eyes staring cloudily up at the orange-streaked sunset. Damian wrenches the knife from her chest, wiping it clean once more and offering it back to Janis. Her hands shaking violently, she slowly retrieves it, tucking it back into her side holster.

Aaron clears his throat, his voice a little husky as he speaks. “What do we do with her?”

“She has a name!” Gretchen snaps, her voice weak and breaking. She and Karen were friends in first grade and have been ever since, and it’s no secret that a few of the kisses they shared back in high school were sober. Janis’s heart clenches in sympathy for the other girl as she wipes angrily at her eyes, glaring at them all. “She has a name, and she’d want to be buried!”

“We don’t have time to dig a hole that big!” Janis snarls roughly, her own voice cracking on the words as she wipes desperately at her eyes. “Shove her back in the lake and get out of here before someone else gets fucking mauled to death!”

As soon as the words leave her lips, she regrets them, but it’s already too late. The echo of her harsh words hangs heavy in the air like fog over a mountain. Janis holds her head up defiantly, refusing to apologize. That’s the only thing her father ever taught her: apologies are a sign of weakness. Anything you do, you need to stand behind. Janis has no love for her father, but she’s always followed his words. They resound in her ears now, the rough, slurring voice bouncing around in her brain, ricocheting off her skull like a ping-pong ball. 

Gretchen’s eye glows like a burning coal at her words, anger raging in her face, causing an expression that makes even Janis take a slight step backwards. “You’re a fucking bitch, Janis,” Gretchen growls, her voice low and menacing, cracking with anger and grief. “You’re a fucking bitch, and I wish you’d died in the Blaze. Would have done the rest of us a whole lot of favors.”

After a moment of shocked silence, Gretchen straightens again, the anger fading away, her functional eye now glistening slightly. “I’m not feeding Karen to the sharks. They’re already here, they’d ravage her in seconds.”

Janis peers slightly over the edge of the dock, both to look for sharks and to avoid Damian’s disappointed gaze. Gretchen is right; dark fins rise above the water, swimming in circles around the locus of the bloody clouds, now starting to dissipate into the lake. As she watches, trying to block out the low murmurs of the group behind her, one of the sharks bobs to the surface for a moment, a hunk of flesh trapped in its bloody jaws. As Janis stares in confusion, the pieces click neatly into place in her head. The shark has captured Karen’s leg.

For the second time today, Janis’s stomach evacuates its contents and she spits up a thin stream of acid into the lake, wiping her mouth in disgust. She can’t tear her eyes away as the small cluster of sharks swims around the area, occasionally emerging with chunks of flesh. Some of the pieces are darker, inhuman. After a moment of puzzlement, the pieces fall into place yet again. They’re cannibalizing the body of the shark she killed. 

“Dammit,” she mumbles under her breath, cursing her lack of sense. “That was perfectly good food.”

No one pays her any mind, not even Damian. Janis takes the hint, tearing herself away from the sharks to begin unpacking. She pulls out the sheet of canvas which functions as a tent, shaking it out to unfold it. The yellowed cloth whips in the wind, burning her hands as she clings to it, trying to hold it in place. The wind suddenly gusts, blowing roughly over her and the tent, and then it’s gone, fluttering off into the sunset, snatching away a nail with it.

Janis swears at the top of her lungs, clutching her bleeding hand. Tears pool in her eyes, tears of frustration and anger and grief and hopelessness and guilt, but she refuses to let them go. She’s one massive, rotting tooth, the anger and pain digging new cavities every day, sinking into her very foundations and weakening her resolve. And it hurts, it hurts every day, all the time. Janis is in constant pain from holding in the rot. But as scary as it is to think about holding it in for even one more second, the idea of letting it out is even scarier. 

She’s built on a rotten foundation, and if she pries away the pieces that dig into her flesh like angry thorns, she’s afraid she’ll be left with nothing but a crumbling, cracked-open shell. The rot hurts, but it keeps her in one piece.


	6. Flashbacks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw for vivid nightmares

Even Damian won’t look Janis in the eye as they huddle around the campfire, jackets over their heads to protect them from exposure. She keeps silent, nursing her bleeding thumb. The others mutter back and forth about plans, a schedule, transport home, how to search the tower. Janis doesn’t listen. She stares numbly into the fire, watching the dancing flames lick at the scraps of wood they gathered from the wreckage of the city.

The others make no effort to include her, and Janis makes no effort to join in the plans. As soon as her eyes grow heavy, she curls up where she sits, wrapping her jacket over herself for warmth, her hand clenched tightly around her knife.

She’s never liked to sleep. Before the Blaze, sleep was a nuisance, a chunk of eight hours removed from her day where she could be working on her art. After, sleeping is a terrifying trip into a frightening netherworld where her worst nightmares dwell like sleeping dragons, just waiting for her to awaken them. But she’s tired, bone-tired, and facing her demons is for once less terrifying than the aura of thick hatred surrounding their small encampment.

She relaxes as much as she can, trying to loosen the painfully tight muscles that draw her shoulder blades together in a permanently defensive position. Slowly, she lets her eyes blink shut, the flickering orange tongues of the flame seemingly waving a goodbye to her as black washes over her vision.

Screaming. So much screaming. Curled into Damian. He shields her eyes. Screams. Screams. Echoing. Filling the room like water, stealing her breath away. Panic. Clinging to Damian. Tears that sting worse than the smoke. Choking. Can’t breathe. Arms around her. Carried out to clean air.

_Holly. ___

__Tearing loose from Damian. Running. Feet slap against pavement. Pain. Can’t breathe again. Not from smoke._ _

__Following road. Towards home. Fire everywhere. Bombs still following. Fire war is scarier than nuclear._ _

__Nuclear would vaporize her. Fire will kill her so much more slowly._ _

__Dresden. Dresden. Dresden. Dresden. Dresden._ _

__The word rattles through her brain, ricocheting off her skull like a ping pong ball veering off course._ _

__The fire tornadoes._ _

__Destroyed the city in World War II._ _

__Destroying her now._ _

__Lungs burn. Feet ache. Everything hurts. Can’t stop running._ _

__Fire tornadoes touching down. Trees ripped from the earth. Too strong. Tears up everything._ _

__More screams._ _

__World ripped away into the burning pillars of licking orange tongues._ _

__Turning onto her street._ _

__House is collapsed in a pile of rubble._ _

__Limp piles of flesh smeared with blood in front._ _

__Mom._ _

__Janis can’t even scream as she stares down at the smoke-choked, ashen remains of her mother._ _

__High-pitched cry from the house._ _

__That name._ _

___JJ. ____ _

____Little head. Pigtails. Silver chain dangling from her neck, glinting in the light of the fires._ _ _ _

____Holly._ _ _ _

____Fire tornado sweeping towards them with terrifying swiftness._ _ _ _

____Running to Holly._ _ _ _

____Crashing impact that shakes the earth. Shattering the windows and sending rubble flying._ _ _ _

____And Janis is a coward._ _ _ _

____A rotten, filthy coward._ _ _ _

____Drops to the ground, rolling to cover her head._ _ _ _

____One final scream and the world goes silent._ _ _ _

____Lifting head. Tastes metallic liquid. Blood._ _ _ _

____Limp body._ _ _ _

____Frail and small.  
Nearly torn to shreds. Locket still glinting. Blood gleams crimson over the silver._ _ _ _

____Bloody, burned hands tear the locket from her neck._ _ _ _

____Eyes sting. Choking on smoke. Can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t think, can’t feel._ _ _ _

____Blood washes over her, pouring down her arms. Holly’s blood._ _ _ _

____Literally and metaphorically on her hands._ _ _ _

____And then Janis bolts upright, her chest heaving frantically as she scrabbles desperately to escape the threat she can’t identify, brandishing the knife gripped in her bone-white knuckles._ _ _ _

____Slowly, she quiets a little, her throat still burning and raw as she tries to regain her breath, panting desperately. No point in the knife. Can’t stab the monsters coming for her in the night._ _ _ _

____Janis slowly opens her pack, digging out the thin silver chain buried at the bottom. She cleaned it after she lost Holly, wiping away the sticky blood spattering the precious metal. The chain glides through her fingers as she toys with it, the small silver heart swinging rhythmically as she pulls the silver links through her calloused fingers. Looking inside the heart is too painful._ _ _ _

____Her heart burning with pain that stabs like a thousand swords, she slowly coils the chain around her hand, gripping the heart in her clenched fist. Slowly, careful not to wake the others, she wriggles closer to the fire, scanning the slumbering forms of her friends. Damian is on the far right, his chest rising and falling evenly. Without hesitation, she crawls under his jacket, curling into his side.  
He stirs slightly, shifting in confusion. “Jan…?” he mumbles, his voice raspy with sleep. _ _ _ _

____Janis nods rapidly, burrowing even further into his comforting embrace. She knows he probably hasn’t forgiven her yet, but he’s not that heartless, or maybe he’s just too tired to protest. Whatever the reason, he doesn’t push her aside, instead wordlessly wrapping an arm around her before settling back into sleep, his light snores comforting her slightly._ _ _ _

____Janis lays wide awake against him, trying to calm down. She can still see the images flickering over her eyes. All she wants to do is forget. But every night forces her to keep remembering, and she doesn’t know how many more reminders she can take._ _ _ _


	7. Ascending The Tower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for shooting

The rosy fingers of dawn streaking over the horizon arouse Janis from her mindless daze. She chooses not to move, instead lying peacefully against Damian, listening to the comforting, rhythmic thrum of his heartbeat. He slumbers on, his arms still wrapped loosely around her, snoring lightly under the jacket.

It’s comforting to lie there, able to relax for once, listening to the occasional scattered calls of birds greeting the sun. She feels almost safe, allowing her mind to drift from thoughts of survival to happier things. The chain burns around her hand as she lays silently against her best friend, remembering what her life used to be like.

She was a sister. And a daughter. And an artist. She won prizes and competed against some of the best artists in Illinois and painted things that made people feel and brought tears to their eyes.

She was ridiculous and naive and foolish and messy and nonsensical and self-obsessed, but she was talented and kind and smart and happy with her life, as well as happy in general. 

Now all she has left of that life is a delicate silver chain strung through her fingers like yarn in a game of cat’s cradle.

Janis sighs, shifting reluctantly away from Damian to replace the necklace in the bottom of her musty rucksack. Since yesterday, the water has almost dried in her hair, but she regrets the choice to dive in even more now. The water softened the clots of filth in her hair, muddying it and drying into a hard-packed clump that itches her scalp and weighs heavy on her head. Muttering a litany of her favorite swear words, Janis claws at the dried lumps of mud with her fingers for a few minutes before surrendering, pulling her hands away from the useless task of trying to clean her hair.

The others are beginning to stir now, pushing away their jackets and pulling themselves up into sitting positions, yawning as they attempt to stretch out their achy muscles from a night on cold stone. Janis rapidly busies herself with stoking the few glowing coals they left burning in the center of their encampment, both because she wants a warm breakfast and to avoid eye contact with her friends.

Gretchen stalks past her silently, limping from the aching in her legs as she scoops up her pack. “What are we doing for food?”

“Cattail bread,” Regina snaps immediately, ignoring the ensuing groans of protest. “We need to move. Eat quickly and pack, we’ve still got to walk to the tower.”

Janis moodily stabs a slice of the crumbly bread on a stick, toasting it briefly over the few small flames she managed to revive before stuffing it in her mouth. As the bread crumbles tastelessly over her tongue, she closes her eyes, trying to suppress her gag reflex. Pretending it’s her mother’s homemade lasagna, she chews as quickly as possible, struggling to remember the taste to recreate it. It doesn’t work. 

“Straight to the tower?” Damian asks, pulling a face as he finishes his bread slice. “Are you sure we shouldn’t make a plan first?”

“The plan,” Regina snaps, her aching muscles not improving her chronically short temper, “is to stab anything in black and white and grab as many prisoners as you can. Would you like a Powerpoint and prepared speech, or is that a sufficient plan?”

“Powerpoint would be cool,” Janis pipes up, the pit in her stomach the tasteless bread has failed to fill worsening her own poor mood. “Maybe a Ted Talk?”

“Janis, shut the hell up and don’t open your mouth again unless you see Chess Force or you want to find out how far I can shove a knife blade up your asshole,” Gretchen retorts, stomping hard on Janis’s crumbling boot. Janis opens her mouth to reply, but bites her tongue, retaliating by shoving Gretchen sideways instead.

Not deigning to react to her shameless prodding, Gretchen continues. “Let’s just move. Eat while we walk. I want to get out of this hellhole of a city.”

Everyone except Janis murmurs in agreement and then they’re walking through the rubble of the city, the worn nylon strap digging into Janis’s shoulder as they leave the fire to burn itself out. There’s no fuel to feed it anyway.

They move forward in silence, pebbles skittering across the ruined cobblestones as they kick them aside. The smog still lies thick and heavy in the air, even after the ruination of every factory, sweatshop, and all other pollution-belching smokestacks. Janis’s chest tightens uncomfortably as they walk and she winces, pressing a hand to her chest. This would be the worst possible time to have an asthma attack.

Damian sidles up to her, rubbing her back gently as they walk. “You okay, Jan?” It’s another mark of how the apocalypse has remolded her that Janis doesn’t even know which part he means. 

She goes with the easiest to answer. “Just a little trouble breathing. I’m fine.” Inopportunely, her lungs decide at that moment to convulse, forcing a raspy cough out of her that nearly doubles her over.

“Right,” Damian replies, signaling to Regina to stop as he pats her back rhythmically with his firm, muscled hands. “You’re about to have an asthma attack, Jan. Your inhaler ran out ages ago, you’ve got to be more careful.”

“Something to do here,” Janis wheezes, coughing hard again, bracing her hands on her knees to hold herself up. “Pharmacist...meds...inhaler...fuck…”

Damian’s face tightens worriedly as he thumps her back, wrapping his arm around her waist to hold her steady as she wheezes slightly, trying to recover her breath. “Breathe, Jan...nice and even, you got this…”

“What’s the holdup?” Gretchen complains, glaring at Janis viciously. “We’re on a timeline, remember?”

“Janis can’t breathe!” Damian snaps back, not turning away from Janis. “What can I do, Jan?”

“Keep...with...back…” Janis gasps, sucking in a thin, weak breath of air. Iron bands are wrapped around her lungs, tightening more by the moment, constricting her lungs and blocking her air supply.

Damian mutters an acknowledgement as he pats her back firmly, his other arm tightening supportively around her stomach to keep her upright as she wheezes. The others stare silently at her, and Janis gets the acute feeling that Damian will be the only one to mourn her if this asthma attack drops her dead.

As he holds her, Damian talks to her soothingly. “Hang on, Jan, just hang in there, you’ll be all right,” he murmurs, thumping her back again. “You’re okay-”

The unique sound of gunfire shredding through stone cuts him off, drowning out the rest of his words. Bullets rain down from the empty piles of rubble, the few remaining buildings serving as standpoints for the snipers hiding above their heads. Regina swears at the top of her lungs, shoving Gretchen’s bow at her. “Return fire, for fuck’s sake!”

“With wooden arrows?!” Gretchen shrieks back, already loading the bow anyway. The others unsheathe their pistols, holding them up weakly, but they’re at a disadvantage by being on the low ground as it is, and their weapons are no march for Chess Force guns. Not to mention the amount of ammunition they’ll waste trying to fight off snipers from the ground.

“Run,” Janis wheezes, trying to straighten as much as she can. “Zigzag...run...only way...live…”  
Spewing a litany of curse words that could scald even Janis’s ears, Damian shoves Janis towards Aaron, already limping away as fast as his one good leg can carry him. Aaron slings Janis effortlessly over his shoulder like a rag doll, taking off at a dead run after Damian. Regina growls under her breath, flipping off the windows before sprinting after them. Gretchen covers their retreat, a rough-hewn wooden arrow loaded into her bow.

Bullets skitter across the pavement, sending up waves of shattered rock that threaten to take their legs out from underneath them. They’re outnumbered and underarmed for this battle. All they can do is retreat and hope they can outrun the Chess Force officers.

Janis’s lungs burn. The hot sun beats down on her back, sending streams of sweat pouring over her inevitably burning skin. Rivulets of perspiration soak Aaron completely as he struggles to maintain his pace, his chest heaving as he fights to breathe. She can only imagine the strain his muscles must be under from her added weight and a stab of guilt shoots through her at the realization that Aaron has absolutely no reason to be lowering his own chances of survival in order to increase hers. Yet he is, and the thought washes over her in a wave of regret and shame that she shoves aside as quickly as it comes on. Morals can be discussed later. For now, she needs to focus on not getting shot.

Regina finally dives into a narrow alleyway, nearly sealed by the heaps of rubble blocking it. Aaron and Damian follow her, with Gretchen ducking in last. Aaron shoves Janis behind a pile of rock, forcing her into a crouch to hide her from the Chess Force troops. 

They wait in silence, not even daring to breathe in case they’re heard. The rock scrapes Janis’s knees and elbows, sending blood trickling down her limbs, but she keeps her mouth clamped shut, straining her ears for the clacking of metal boots on shattered pavement.

The Chess Force soldiers storm past their little alleyway, their leader barking commands in a hoarse, guttural voice. The sound of their boots and his angry orders make Janis tremble with fear, huddling against Aaron and Damian as silent tears track down her cheeks. Memories flash through her brain like a poorly edited montage. The Chess Force soldier stopping them on the cart. The first one from their little village to be dragged to the execution woods. Slipping into the trees to bring water to the tortured soul. Vomit stinging her throat at the sight. The threats against her. The demands to hand over her food, her supplies, even her last remaining tiny cup of paint or be nailed to a tree. Damian touches her hand lightly, all the movement he dares to make, offering her the slightest bit of comfort.

Gradually, the clattering of their armor dies away, leaving them in silence only shattered by the cries of the shorebirds. They still don’t dare to move. Janis lays curled against the rocks, practically in the fetal position, trying to make herself as small as possible. Her heart pounds in her chest and her stomach churns queasily from fear. Adrenaline rushes through her veins, making her ears ring and body tremble. Even as the others slowly pull themselves off of the stony ground, Janis lays shivering against the rocks, barely breathing to be as quiet as possible.

“Jan, come on,” Damian mutters, slowly, lifting her to her feet. “We gotta go now, they’re gone.”

Janis shakes her head mutely as she tugs at his grip, forcefully trying to return to the comforting feeling of hiding, buried behind the rocks. “Jan, stop it,” Damian orders, staggering on his good leg as he struggles to hold her up. “Stop it. We’re going to the Sears Tower now. They’re gone.” He gives her a little shake, forcing her to look into his grim blue eyes. “Get your shit together, Jan, or we’re not getting out of here alive.”

It’s the firmest he’s been with her in a long time, and the gravity of his voice is was what snaps her out of her daze enough to stand on her own two feet, tossing her pack over her shoulder and muffling a yelp of pain when the nylon strap rubs against the raw place on her shoulder blade. She can feel the judgemental glare from Gretchen, the exasperated look from Regina, the dull confusion and annoyance from Aaron. She ignores them completely, shaking away their judgement like she does the pebbles stuck to her skin. Only Damian understands why she fears the Chess Force soldiers so greatly, and if leaving the others in the dark means they consider her the weak link, then she’ll gladly take that title before confiding in Gretchen.

Regina shoves roughly in front of her, reclaiming her spot as their leader. Janis falls back willingly, not having the desire or the energy to argue with Regina. Instead, she drops to Damian’s pace, walking next to him in silence. She knows he worries about her. Janis would too, in his position. Sometimes she wishes she wasn’t such a permanent heartbreak for him to deal with, but he doesn’t complain. 

He’s far, far too good for her. 

She can hear his muffled grunts of pain as he limps forward, his cane clicking harder against the ground than it normally does. He has to be in pain, he was never a runner even on two legs, much less one. Damian’ll never say it out loud, but he’s struggling.

Wordlessly, Janis grabs the strap of his backpack, tugging it off his back. He pauses, staring at her in shock, but she doesn’t meet his gaze. Instead,she slings his backpack over her other shoulder and continues walking, following Regina like she’s done nothing.

Tonight, she won’t be able to sleep, the two raw strips of worn-down skin from the nylon keeping her awake. But Damian doesn’t deserve pain. God knows, he suffers enough of it already.

Janis, on the other hand, can’t help but to feel like she deserves every single moment of the burning on her flesh.


	8. Climbing

Searching the Tower is almost boring.

Almost, because of the constant threat that they’ll all be gunned down by the Chess Force.

That kind of pressure tends to keep you on your toes. 

Regina splits them up into two groups, sending Janis and Damian off to one side and keeping Gretchen and Aaron with her. A wise decision, Janis thinks, wincing at the unadulterated venom in Gretchen’s stare as she strides after Regina.

She and Damian move in comfortable silence, able to read each other’s body language well enough to cover each other. Backs slightly tilted inwards, ready to stand back-to-back to go down fighting if they have to. Janis clutches her knife in her hand, her knuckles whitening with the pressure. She made a promise to herself when they first moved out to the marshes: if Damian is captured, she’ll use her last shot with her knife to kill him. One clean throw right into his heart. Because if anyone deserves to be left to die, strung-up between two trees with her intestines spilling out onto the grass, it’s her.

For a massive torture camp, the Sears Tower is eerily silent. The only sounds are the scrabbling of tiny claws on concrete and little squeaks from the rats, the skittering of pebbles over the tile floors from their shoes, and the whistling of the wind blowing through the shattered windows. The atmosphere reminds Janis of the haunted house her mother took her to when she was seven. Janis insisted she wouldn’t be scared, she could go through on her own, she’d be just fine. Reluctantly, her mother had let her go, only for Janis to run out sobbing fifteen minutes later, barely able to breathe. 

Remembering her mother doesn’t help much, either.

To pass the time as they search the crumbling rooms of the abandoned building, Janis thinks about her mother. Her mother, a thin, bony woman with Janis’s eyes, who loved her and her sister with all her heart. She still remembers her mother coming home from her third job and still finding the energy to help Janis figure out that one math problem she just couldn’t understand no matter what she tried. It always became easy as her mother explained it, the numbers untwisting before her eyes in the dim fluorescent light of the kitchen at night, the paper pressed flat against the ancient, scratched, unpolished wooden dining table. And every month, no matter what, on the last Sunday, her mother would find an hour for Janis. Her mother would paint her nails from Janis’s tiny collection of polishes, layering on the colors just right as her warm hand steadied Janis’s cold, anemic one. And then they’d talk while Janis’s nails dried, about everything or about nothing, and Janis was free to cry or scream or complain or whine or simply lay in her mother’s lap and not move, simply being held by someone who loved her. 

Janis wipes quickly at the sudden tears stinging her eyes at the remembrance of her mother stroking her brown hair back behind her ear, smiling lovingly down at her as she brushed her bony, calloused hand over Janis’s soft cheek. The memories daze her, whisking her away in a delicate spiral into a soft haze of the past, easing her pain and distracting her from the shattered glass littering the ground around her feet. 

She’s so lost in the cloud of dreams that Damian has to call her name three times before she hears him. She turns to him slowly, shaking her head slightly to clear it as she blinks back the stinging tears. “Y-yeah…?”

“I can’t keep going,” Damian says heavily, his face tight with pain as he pants heavily beside her. “I’ve gotta stop, Jan, I can’t keep doing the stairs.” His bad leg trembles under him, even as he leans heavily on his cane for support. A surge of guilt washes over Janis at the pain in his voice. She’s been dreaming happily while he struggles to walk, lost in her head while he drags himself up the stairs.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Janis mumbles, staring guiltily at her feet. “Okay, um, you wanna...stay here, I guess? I’ll keep going, finish searching, and you can rest, get ready for the trip back down?”

“You shouldn’t go on your own,” Damian protests, catching her arm as he leans against the wall for support. “That’s not safe, Jan. I don’t care if there is a torture camp up there, I’m not letting you get shot down by the Chess Force for them.”

Janis squeezes his hand lightly, forcing a faint smile. “I won’t. I promise. If I feel like I’m not safe, I’ll turn around, okay? I’m not gonna let anything happen to me. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Damian pulls her in tightly, holding her as close to him as he can, struggling to stand even with the support of the wall as he cradles her in his arms. Janis buries her head in his shirt, sighing contentedly as he rubs her back for a moment, kissing her head lightly. “Be safe, Jan. I don’t know what I’d do without my art freak.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Janis orders, brushing clean a section of the floor for him to sit down. “I’ll be back before the sun sets, no extra holes.”

Damian flicks her arm teasingly and motions for her to keep going, sinking down to the ground. Janis waves one last time before darting away up the next flight of stairs, her eyes scanning the walls and floor for any signs of a struggle, resisting the urge to turn around and sprint back into Damian’s arms.

Searching is even more boring alone. She keeps up a brisk pace in order to keep her promise to Damian, causing her lungs to ache and her leg muscles to burn like the embers scattering the ruins of the world. Worse yet, the Tower is clearly deserted. No disturbances, no sounds other than those of the rats, no splatters of blood to be found. Janis is searching a skeleton and expecting to find flesh, and after a few more stories it’s nearly impossible to focus on looking.

She does her best to keep track of the stories, but they’re all identical and the numbers rattle out of her head as she climbs flight after flight of stairs. She’s fairly sure that she left Damian on story number seven, and she’s now roughly on number twenty-five. Only eighty-five more to go.

The sun climbs higher and higher into the sky, turning the building into a stone oven as she runs. Soon enough she’s drenched in sweat, her hair soaked and shirt clinging to her skin like flypaper. Nausea churns in her stomach threateningly, and the world flips and tilts under her feet like standing on a spinning top. Janis finally stumbles to a stop as she reaches floor number forty-eight, collapsing against the wall for support as her stomach threatens to rebel. Not heatstroke, not heatstroke, not heatstroke…

Janis carefully digs out her water bottle, sipping on it hesitantly as she leans against the wall, trying to catch her breath as her chest heaves, lungs threatening to tighten. Her legs feel like wet pasta, trembling under her as she staggers against the wall. Sitting feels so tempting, but Janis is certain that if she allows herself to sit, she won’t get up again.

As soon as the nausea fades, she stuffs her water bottle into her pack and starts again. This time it’s harder, her legs screaming in protest as the water sloshes sickeningly in her stomach and her lungs struggle to take in air. It’s so tempting to stop, to sink down against the wall and sleep on the floor, just curl up and rest and not move for hours…

But she knows what Damian will think if she doesn’t come down. And she can’t do that to him.

So Janis keeps running.


	9. Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw for torture and graphic descriptions

Janis staggers onto floor ninety-eight, clutching her stomach as she stumbles to a halt. She can’t afford to throw up her water, she doesn’t have more and she needs to be hydrated if she’s going to make it back down. She collapses against the wall, taking deep, even breaths and desperately trying to control her nausea, swallowing down the taste of bile at the back of her throat, desperate not to vomit.

As she stumbles on her aching feet, her hand slides across the wall instead of gaining purchase, nearly hurling her to the ground. Gripping a protruding iron support beam for stabilization, Janis lifts her hand, squinting at the dark liquid dripping from her palm.

Blood.

Janis’s eyes widen as she careful wipes away the dripping crimson, studying the splatter of blood on the wall. It’s fresh. Spattered roughly, from a blunt blow. Other rusty stains darken the walls, older and drier than the one she found.

She’s found it.

Janis tugs her knife out of its holster, gripping it tightly as she slips forward. She promised Damian she wouldn’t get shot for a bunch of prisoners, but she’s so close...she has to know what’s happening in the elusive torture camp.

One glimpse of a checkered uniform and she’ll run, she tells herself, slipping as quietly as she can over the ruined floors. Her hand shakes around the knife.

As she inches closer, gradually, new sounds join the skittering of rats and the whistling of the wind. Clanking. A lot of clanking. And...oh, God. Whimpers. Whatever’s happening in the torture camp is agonizing for someone to be producing those sounds.

There’s a door at the end of the hallway, not like the others. Fresher, newer, shiny bronze hinges holding it in place in the repaired door frame. Janis creeps up to it, pressing her ear to the polished wood. No boots. 

She takes a deep breath, steeling herself. Then she pushes open the door.

Janis immediately loses her battle against the nausea as the smell washes over her. The smell of human waste and decomposing flesh hits her like a wave and the water she drank on her way up is in her throat as she vomits, leaning on the wall for support. Even more drained, weaker than before, Janis staggers into the room, scanning quickly for soldiers.

There are none. They’re safe, for now.

Janis spins dizzily, trying to take in the sight around her. Twenty or thirty people, all chained to the walls, heavy iron cuffs around their hands. Blood trickles down their arms, and Janis realizes with horror that the cuffs are spiked on the inside. They’ve all been stripped naked, left to hang in the heat. They’re practically skeletons, skin stretched tight over protruding bones. Massive black flies buzz around their wounds, crawling in the flesh. Janis nearly vomits again at the sight of wriggling white maggots inside the gaping wounds.

Some of them are clearly dead, eyes rolled back in their heads and skin too milky to have any pumping blood in the veins. Janis doesn’t bother with the corpses, instead rushing over to the first feebly moving prisoner she can see. The girl mumbles fearfully as Janis reaches for the cuff, studying it briefly before striking the lock with her blade.

“Hey,” Janis mutters rapidly, pounding on the lock with the tip of her knife. “You’re safe now, you’re okay. I’m gonna get you out of here. Just give me a second on these cuffs…”

The first one shatters and Janis eases the girl’s mauled hand out of its iron grip, letting her arm hang limply as she starts on the other one, her free arm braced around the skeletal prisoner to catch her. “One more, I’ll get you down…”

The girl’s desperate mumbles become more frantic, her hand twitching desperately at her side as Janis strikes at her cuff. “Shh, you’re okay,” Janis murmurs in what she hopes is a soothing voice, scanning the room to count how many more cuffs she has to break. “Just a moment…”

The girl weakly kicks out with her leg and Janis glances over her shoulder, just as the cuff finally breaks, sending the girl slumping into her arms. The sight blocking the doorway makes her freeze, ice flooding her veins.

Chess Force.

They’re Special Officers, clothed in all black uniforms, white stripes on their helmets designating them as the highest of the Force members. Their guns are raised, ready to fire as they march into the room, round barrels pointed directly at Janis’s forehead. “Halt in the name of Sin-Kana!” the leader demands, his voice gravelly through the helmet.

“In your dreams, Darth Vader!” Janis screeches back, clinging to the girl balanced on her hip while raising her knife defensively. She’s outnumbered six to one, her weapons are far inferior, and she’s weighed down by a barely conscious teenager. Her only hope is to distract and run like hell.

“I said halt!” the officer demands, locking his gun, ready to fire. Janis has only seconds before she dies. She has to use them well.

“Don’t fuck with me! I have the power of God and anime on my side!” As a flood of confusion washes over the officers’ faces, Janis flings her knife at full velocity, flooded with grim satisfaction as it hits its mark. The leading officer falls silently, crimson blood slowly leaking from the wound as he collapses backward.

It’s only a momentary distraction. But Janis uses it to her full advantage, abandoning her knife and sprinting out the door, already pursued by the remaining officers. 

She keeps close to the wall, the girl clinging limply to her as she runs, her eyes flicking around desperately for any means of escape. A closet, a desk, anything under which to hide. Janis is weak and dehydrated and can’t keep this up much longer. Hiding is her only hope.

The elevator shaft looms ahead, dark and menacing, no longer in operation. It’s a long, long shot...but it’s a shot, and it’s better than being gunned down.

“Hang on as tight as you can,” Janis orders the girl, shifting her path towards the elevator shaft. “Don’t let go, you hear me?” No response, but Janis prays she has, the boots clicking behind her menacingly as she runs, blood roaring in her ears.

As the shouts of the officers echo behind her, she takes a flying leap, diving into the shaft.


	10. Don’t Let Me Fall

The cables tear her skin to shreds. Blood pours down her arms as Janis scrabbles for purchase, grabbing at the cable she caught in mid-air. The girl on her back clings to her like a koala, her foul breath hot and gasping in her ear as Janis clings to the rough steel cables, tears of agony leaking through her eyelids as the twisted strands of iron thread eat into her bleeding, dripping palms.

She locks her legs around the shafts, her weight and the weight of the girl on her back threatening to drag them down into the abyss. Her arms tremble as she hangs in midair above the pit, ninety-eight stories above the ground. Or, in layman’s terms, a really fucking long way down, Janis thinks, trying to distract herself from the pain with dry humor.

The boots clatter overhead, shouts echoing through the halls as Janis clings in desperate silence, rough iron strands shredding the skin of her palms. The girl on her back is trembling with the effort of hanging on, her arms shaking. Hot tears leak into Janis’s shirt, and a wave of pity washes over her, but she can’t make any move to comfort the girl without sending them both plunging to the ground.

Janis’s hands slip a few inches down and the girl squeals in fright, latching onto her even tighter. Janis hisses in pain as her flesh tears, clinging desperately to the swaying cable. She can’t have come this far, survived this long, just to die falling down an elevator shaft. No matter what it costs her, she will hang on to this cable. 

After a thousand years, the clicking of boots on concrete fades away, the shouting of the soldiers vanishing into the distance. Janis takes a moment to pray it’s not a trap, her arms trembling with the effort, before slowly beginning to haul herself and the girl upwards.

The adrenaline rush is fading, and it grows more and more difficult for Janis to even hang on, much less pull herself up. She uses her feet as much as she can, utilizing her leg strength to push them upwards, but her arms take the bulk of the struggle as she hauls them upwards, trying to ignore the whimpers of the girl on her back.

Her hands screech in protest as she goes hand over hand, clinging to the cable. Her breaths come in short, rapid gasps as she climbs the shaft, her legs pushing her up ever so slightly. It would be so much easier without the girl...Janis could brace her feet against the walls of the shaft and climb with her legs, her hands only assisting. But getting into that position would almost certainly shake the girl’s weakening, desperate grip, and Janis couldn’t live with herself if she let this girl die so soon after extending survival to her. She’ll get them both out alive. She has to.

Finally, she’s level with the gap leading into the shaft, staring at the safety of solid ground. So close...the concrete is one big step away. But it’s one big step she has no idea how to take. 

Her brain swiftly takes in the situation, struggling to find a solution. There’s only one way that she can think of, and it’s madness, but the girl’s grip grows looser by the moment, and she’s running out of time.

“Hey,” she hisses to the girl, earning a slight whimper in response. “I need you to jump, okay?”

The girl lets out a little cry in response, burying her head into Janis’s shirt. Janis sighs, nudging her as much as she dares. “I don’t mean into the shaft. Out that way. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, but I can’t hang on much longer.”

The girl squeaks in fright, but she lifts her head slightly, hopefully listening to Janis. “I’m gonna swing out that way,” Janis continues, nodding towards the gap. “I need you to let go of me and jump over there. Then I’ll get down. I won’t let you fall, I promise.”

The girl nods shakily, her face even paler with fright. Janis swings back as far as she can, taking a deep breath as she flies back forwards. With a little wail, the girl pushes away from her, rolling towards the solid ground on the other side. Janis stares desperately as she reaches for the floor, almost there, so close…

And she just barely falls short.

Janis stifles a scream as the girl somehow manages to latch onto the side of the shaft, her hands clinging to the edge of the elevator. She whimpers pitifully, kicking desperately as she struggles to pull herself up, her atrophied muscles barely able to support her, much less haul herself upwards. “Stop moving,” Janis hisses, reaching out with her leg for the ground. “Save your energy, I’m coming.”

The girl stills slightly, her hands white with effort as she clings to the elevator. Janis takes a deep breath, releasing the cable and hurling herself towards the door. For a terrifying moment, she hangs in midair over a gap of ninety-eight stories, one false move away from death.

Then she’s on the concrete, scraped and bruised and bleeding, her momentum sending her rolling. She wants nothing more to lay there on the hard ground and sleep, her muscles aching and skin torn. But the girl’s fearful whimpers drag her back to the present and Janis forces herself up, dragging herself to her side.

Janis leans back over the void, grabbing the whimpering girl’s arms and dragging her upwards with every bit of her remaining strength. Slowly, painfully, she snatches her up from the gaping void, her new friend whimpering and kicking slightly as Janis lifts her up.

Finally, they’re both on solid ground again. Janis opens her mouth to question her, demanding to know what’s going to happen, where they are, why she’s here, what is going on, but before she manages a single sound, the girl’s eyes roll back in her head and she falls limp, slumping against Janis soundlessly.

Dizzily, Janis scoops her up, almost numb to the furious burning of her muscles as she shoulders her burden. Her knife is gone. She’s alone. The Chess Force will be planning retaliation as she stands. And she’s still ninety-eight fucking stories off the ground. 

Ninety-eight stories to descend before dusk.

Janis hasn’t been this close to sobbing in a long, long time.


	11. I’m Coming, Wait For Me

“Janis!”

At the sound of her name, Janis’s head jerks slightly as her feet carry her slowly forward. She has no idea what floor she’s on, how many more she has to carry this girl down before reaching the bottom. All she knows is that she’s not there yet.

“Janis!” and then Aaron is storming up the next flight of stairs, his eyes frantic. “We need to - who is that?!”

“I found it,” Janis mumbles deliriously, stumbling to a stop. “I found them. Cut her free. More up there…”

“Janis, we need to run. Forget the camp, we need to run, far, far away from here. Now.”

“Why…? More people...need to get them down...safety…”

“Janis, they’re going to blow the Tower. Soon. Very, very soon. What we need to do is get out of here.”

Janis stares at him uncomprehendingly, clinging to the girl in her arms. “Have to save them…”

“Janis, if we go back, we’re all going to die. Dump the girl and climb on my back, you look half-dead.”

Janis immediately shakes her head frantically, clinging to the barely breathing girl in her arms. “No, no, no, no, no!”

“Janis, come on, don’t be ridiculous. She’s probably going to die anyway. Just put her down and let’s get out of here.” Aaron glares at her, his brown eyes dark with impatience.

Stubbornly, Janis shakes her head again, pushing past him and starting down the next flight of stairs, the girl cradled in her arms. She’s barely moving forwards, tripping and stumbling down the stairs, but she refuses to stop. She promised this girl she was safe now. She won’t go back on that promise, even at the cost of her life.

Behind her, Aaron growls in frustration, and then the girl has been lifted from her arms and tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “I’m gonna kill you,” Aaron mutters, grabbing Janis’s hand and dragging her along like a reluctant puppy on a leash. “I am so going to kill you, Janis Sarkisian. You owe me so much for this…”

Janis could have kissed him. Instead, she stumbles after him, barely keeping on her feet as she struggles to keep up with his rapid pace, her last dribbles of strength fading more by the moment as she staggers down flight after flight of stairs.

Trucks rumble from somewhere below and Aaron swears under his breath, picking up the pace even more. But the new speed is too much for Janis’s trembling legs and she falls, crashing to the floor, scrabbling weakly to pull herself up. Aaron stares at her for a moment before swearing again, much louder this time, and scooping her up, throwing her over his shoulder like he did to the girl.

Janis slumps limply against him, exhausted and in agony as he runs. He’s slowed down by their weight, but he also hasn’t been through the physical ordeal of the elevator, and he’s moving much faster than she was before. Janis finally half-way relaxes, bouncing against him as he sprints down flight after flight of steps.

Voices rise and fall outside, voices carrying words like explosives and t-minus three minutes, and while they’re close enough to the ground to hear, they’re more than three minutes above it. Aaron, now mumbling a constant stream of swear words, abruptly changes course, heading for the back windows. “Jan, I’m going to toss you out,” he mutters, already shifting her off his shoulder. “You’re gonna have to drop and roll. It’s your best shot. I’ll follow you with your girl here.”

Janis shakes her head firmly, leaning against the wall for support. “Her first.”

“Janis, don’t be ridiculous-”

“You go first or I’m not jumping,” Janis counters, crossing her limp, spaghetti-like arms as best she can, wincing at the pain. 

Aaron glares at her for one long moment, clearly considering fighting her, before obviously thinking better of it. “I fucking hate you, Janis. Just making sure you know that before you die.” Carefully, he eases himself out the window, the girl cradled in his arms. Janis doesn’t stop to think about how he plans to protect them both. 

She gives him thirty seconds and then clambers into the windowsill. She’s only a few stories above the ground, but the height gives her vertigo anyway, making her stomach flip violently as she stares at the ground below.

Shaking slightly, she edges closer. Drop and roll, Aaron said. Drop and roll if she wants to survive this fall. But she’s so tired and sore and she can’t pull that off…

Then the voices fade, leaving it silent, and Janis is snapped back to the reality that she has no choice other than to fall. Closing her eyes so she doesn’t have to see the ground that crushes her, she leans forward off the windowsill.

The air whistles in her ears as she falls, rushing past her as she drops like a stone. Her heart pounds as she does her best to roll, hoping to absorb the impact and escape without breaking anything. So close…

The grond knocks the wind out of her as she lands on her stomach, making her retch pointlessly with the force of it. A foul taste burning in her throat, Janis slowly tries to rise, every muscle in her body burning, struggling to regain her breath from the impact of hitting the ground. Her ears ring as the world spins around her like a sadistic carousel, twisting and tilting as she half-kneels, unable to find the balance or strength to stand. 

Distant, dull screams echo in the background of the ringing. She can’t bring herself to focus on them, slowly slumping down into a heap. So tired...so, so tired. Her mind drifts back to the prison camp at the top of the Tower. They’re all going to die now. Her girl will be the only survivor, as long as Aaron didn’t accidentally snap her neck in the fall. Janis slowly folds her arms over her head, waiting for the blast. 

Smoke billows at the back of her vision as the Tower crumbles behind her, collapsing into a pile of rubble. The flames rise upwards, licking at the sky, and Janis is drowned in a merciful wave of blackness.


	12. Hiding From Myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for sexual assault mention

Her head is pounding when Janis opens her eyes, immediately wishing she hadn’t. She’s nestled in a pile of straw, the bright sun glaring into her unaccustomed eyes. She’s certain there’s a miniature person inside her head, hammering nails through her skull, making her head pound and her stomach churn. Her throat is dry and parched, a disgusting coat of ashy-tasting residue over her tongue and teeth. Janis smacks her lips a few times, pushing herself into a half-upright position and immediately wishing she hadn’t as she flops unceremoniously back into the straw, unable to support herself. 

“Jan! You’re awake!” Damian immediately tucks a hand under her head, pulling her up and pressing a water bottle to her lips. “Thank God…”

Janis sips hesitantly at the water, sighing with relief as the residue washes away, the cool liquid reviving her burning throat. She scans the world around her, taking it in. They’re in what appears to be a metal box, rust-red corrugated walls surrounding them, with an open top allowing the sun to beat down on them. They’re moving; the clouds pass by too quickly for them to be stationary.

“What happened…?” Janis mumbles, wincing as she starts to feel the sting of her hands. When she glances down, they’re wrapped in soft cloth, the cleanest cloth she’s seen since the Blaze. 

“We’re in a train car,” Damian explains, nudging her with the water bottle encouragingly. “We got on illegally, we didn’t have passage and we really just needed to get out of Chicago. We’re probably a few hours from home at this point, we’ve been on for about two days. You’ve been completely out the whole time; you haven’t moved.”

“The girl?” Janis rasps, wincing as her voice cracks weakly. She’s never slept this long, and despite her nausea, her stomach aches with hunger pains. “Do we have anything to eat…?”

“The girl’s fine...we think,” Damian explains, nodding to the left. “She hasn’t woken up. She’s breathing, her vitals are good, she’s just really, really unconscious. We’ve been spoon-feeding her the results of soaking bread in water...it looks revolting, but she hasn’t choked. We’ve still got a few pieces of not-wet bread left, you want some?”

Janis nods rapidly, absolutely famished. Damian hands her a piece, brushing at a few moldy patches. Janis ignores them, shoveling it into her mouth in three massive bites, washing down the rough, crumbly bread with a few more swallows of water. While she’s nowhere near satisfied, her stomach aches less, and she feels more stable as she sits herself up, bracing herself on her elbows. “Can I see her?”

“She’s not super interesting right now,” Damian points out, nodding to a forlorn heap of blankets on the floor a few feet away. “She’s still out cold.”

“I know, I just - I wanna see her,” Janis mumbles, blushing slightly. “I’ve gotta see her…”

“Be my guest,” Damian says with a shrug, helping Janis scoot a few feet across the rough metal towards the girl. “I’ll tell you what I know if you’ll tell me what you know.”

“Done,” Janis mutters, staring down at the face of her girl. She’s still pallid, deep purple bruises staining her milky skin. Her wrists are wrapped like Janis’s hands, rusty blood stains leaking through the thin fabric. She’s wearing nothing but a thin blanket, the torn, dirty fabric tucked protectively around her malnourished body.

“We didn’t have any clothes for her,” Damian explains, nodding to the skimpy covering. “We can find her something when we get back…”

Janis nods, shifting guiltily in her jacket. Her clothes may be torn, ratty, and far too thin for the freezing winters, but she’s lucky enough to have clothes, and her girl lies there naked. “We don’t have anything…?”

“Nothing that isn’t in use,” Damian replies, squeezing her arm lightly. “You did good, Jan. You saved her.”

“Not good enough,” Janis murmurs hollowly, the memories of the other prisoners hanging from their spiked cuffs flashing hauntingly over her eyes. “What’s her condition?”

“She was lucky you got her out when you did. Her wounds are clean. I removed the maggots already. Her wrists show severe damage; don’t know how she got it. And Jan…”

“What?” Janis asks miserably, a deep pit already sinking into her stomach.

“She has severe bruising and minor lacerations on the inside of her thighs. I’d hazard a guess at repeated sexual assaults.” 

Janis glares angrily at the rusty wall, a wave of protectiveness washing over her for the girl she carried to safety. She doesn’t know her, and she’s never spoken to her, and she has no reason to love her, but something about the thin, pallid face of the girl she nearly died to save is tugging ever-so-slightly on what’s left of Janis’s twisted, corroded heartstrings.

“Any idea how old she is?” Janis asks quietly, reaching out to gently touch the girl’s cheek. “Can’t be much younger than us…”

“Her malnutrition accounted for, I’d guess at early twenties, maybe eighteen or nineteen at the earliest,” Damian replies, his own face softening as he adjusts one of the makeshift bandages around her mutilated wrist. “She’s small, but her bones seem fully developed. She’s been starving, but once we get some food into her, she should start to look more like an adult.”

Janis nods, slowly combing her fingers through the tangled mats of the girl’s hair. Under the caked-in filth and tangles, her hair is a beautiful rich auburn, falling to what Janis guesses would be her ribs if it wasn’t so matted. “How long has she been there?”

“I have no idea,” Damian answers, carefully dripping a thin trickle of the bread and water concoction he’d mentioned between her lips. “A long time, I think. Months. Maybe a year. I doubt she could have survived much longer than that.”

For a moment, they look down at the girl in silence, their feeble attempts to care for her feeling weak even to Janis. Then Damian clears his throat, turning to her again. “What do you know? You were the only one who actually saw it…”

Janis nods, trying to dredge up the memories of the torture room. “Her wrists...she was hanging by them. The cuffs were spiked on the inside. That’s what happened to her hands. I’m really concerned about her skin...there was shit and piss everywhere, they clearly weren’t getting bathroom privileges. Any rashes or anything?”

“Ringworm,” Damian says grimly, staring down at her bitterly. “I didn’t want to do too much on her thighs, that just felt invasive and wrong...especially with the bruises I found...but I remember weird circular patches. I made a note to keep an eye on them...she has ringworm, that’s gotta be it.”

“I can check on her legs,” Janis offers, her heart clenching in sympathy for the girl lying prone before her. “I’m a girl, it’ll probably feel less wrong to her…”

“Thank God,” Damian sighs, gently moving her leg to the side. “Go ahead...take a look, tell me everything you can see.”

Janis gently flips her leg to the side, immediately gasping in horror. The girl’s thighs are thin and bony, marred with deep purple bruises interspersed with older yellow and green contusions. Angry red circles of rash dot her legs, yellow pockets of pus bubbling in some of them. Swollen, irritated cuts are scattered over the pale, disfigured skin, some practically pulsing with heat. Janis winces, leaning back. “She’s not even close to being out of the woods. There’s a lot that’s infected in there, and a lot of those red rashes...she’s gonna need medicine, Damian. Real medicine.”

“Jan, we don’t have real medicine,” Damian points out, staring at her like she’s grown a second head. “Real medicine is impossible to find. It’s expensive. That’s money we don’t have.”

Janis stares down at her shoes, her heart aching.The coins burn hot in the lining of her jacket. Six Chess Marks could pay for antibiotics...but her coins. She can’t give up her coins. 

“You’re right,” she says hoarsely, choking back the lump of burning tears at the back of her throat. “Stupid of me. We’ll find something...we have to find something.”

The coins sear into her leg, almost as painfully as the guilt searing into her heart.


	13. A Little Hint of Gentleness

Despite the ache in her body, Janis gently scoops up the girl, a burst of warmth spreading through her at the feeling of the girl’s head lolling against her shoulder. Damian hurries ahead to make up the cot that somehow survived the Blaze in the nurse’s office, gathering together what’s left of their rapidly depleting medical supplies. She’s still unconscious, completely limp and helpless in Janis’s arms. Seeing her so fragile hurts.

“We have to get her clean,” Janis mumbles, tucking the girl’s filthy, starving form under the tattered blankets. “She’s covered in dirt, she’ll get even more infections if she stays like this.”

“How do you suggest we do that?” Gretchen snaps, glaring resentfully at the girl’s limp body. Janis gets the distinctive feeling that Gretchen begrudges the girl’s survival because she believes it should be Karen they saved instead, and while her heart truly aches for the archer, her sympathy is overwhelmed by a surge of protectiveness for the girl. 

“We bring water,” Janis says calmly, tucking the blankets a little more neatly around the girl. “We bring her water, and wash her wounds, and then we figure out how we’re going to feed her.”

“And if she doesn’t wake up?” Gretchen challenges, crossing her arms with one eyebrow raised as she glares at Janis. “Should we just pour our perfectly good food into your vegetable girlfriend?”

“She’s not a vegetable,” Janis growls, bracing herself protectively between Gretchen and the cot. “She was communicating when we were in the Tower. She’s going to wake up.”

“Communicating? How so?” Gretchen asks suspiciously, looking Janis up and down. “Did she squeeze your hand or something?”

“She let me know I was about to be shot,” Janis hisses, her stance growing more protective. “She warned me that I was cornered by six Special Officers, hung on while I fought my way out, and was conscious enough to hang onto me while I hung ninety stories above the ground in a fucking elevator shaft. And when she fell, she managed to hang onto the wall for almost a minute before I was able to pull her up. She’s alive, she’s strong, and she’s going to make it.”

Brown eyes meet brown eyes in a battle of wills, both challenging the other to back down. Janis crosses her arms to match Gretchen’s stance, the room falling eerily silent as the two stand off. 

Gretchen is the first to look away, her eye flicking off to the wall before returning to not quite meet Janis’s. “Fine. Drag a giant bucket of water thirteen miles if you want. But I’ve got things to do that involve actually helping us survive. Don’t come crying when you’ve wasted your week on a dead girl.”

Janis sits back as Gretchen storms out, her matted brown hair swinging behind her. Regina glares at Janis for a moment before following her out, slamming the door behind her. 

Janis takes a moment to process her victory, careful not to allow her smile to widen too much. Then she shakes it off, returning her attention to the girl. “I’m going for water. I’ll get another knife on my way, see if I can spear some big meat. We can use it to make some kind of broth for her; she needs all the calories she can get.”

“Jan, wait!” Damian calls as she starts to open the door again. “Why do you care so much? You don’t even know her name.”

Janis spins around, meeting the curious blue eyes of her lifelong best friend. “I promised her she was safe. I wanna keep that promise.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sharpening the new knife is an arduous process. As Janis painstakingly scrapes the blade over the makeshift grindstone, transforming it gradually from a serrated kitchen knife to a formidable blade, she keenly misses her old knife. It molded perfectly into her hand, easy to sharpen and perfectly weighted. She couldn’t find a surviving blade like her old one, meaning she’s going to have to start from scratch, learning to wield the knife included. 

Janis runs her finger lightly over the tip of the blade, wincing as a thin red line falls in its wake over the calloused pad of her fingertip. Could be sharper, but she’ll accept this, for now at least. She still has to find something for dinner, and carry the water, and learn to use this weapon. Further sharpening can wait.

She squints slightly, taking aim at an old cutting board. The new knife feels awkward in her hand, like someone else’s appendages attached to her own wrist. She can’t find a comfortable grip on the handle, the blade tipping it forward and overweighting it to the front. She lets it leave her hand, spinning awkwardly through the air before striking the edge of the board handle-first.

Why did I have to throw it?

Muttering a litany of curse words, Janis collects the knife, sending it hurtling again towards the board. This time she’s closer to the center, but it still lands handle-first, effectively making it useless. Growling in frustration, Janis goes to collect it again.

Ten tries later, Janis is reaching peak frustration and she has yet to strike the center of the board blade-first. She also has to fetch water and find some kind of small animal, which prove highly elusive with the exception of frogs, and the girl needs more nutrition than the small, rubbery flesh of the amphibians. Janis finally ties her new blade to a broken broom handle, creating a kind of makeshift spear. Hopefully the long range will help catch something.

Janis scoops up the water bucket, heading towards the edge of the woods. Gretchen was exaggerating when she said thirteen miles, but the river is still a good distance away, as well as a treacherous one. The river provides water for the entire village; she’s practically guaranteed to not be alone at the shore. 

The small path they’ve worn through the woods guides Janis towards the little river. Small scuffling noises echo through the forest, small animals diving back into their holes as she shuffles through the carpet of dead leaves and ash and twigs cloaking the hard-packed dirt. Janis doesn’t particularly care, making no effort to be silent. She needs to appear as unsuspicious as possible, and silent steps are too surreptitious for blending in with the normal population. 

The bucket bounces against her shoulder, thudding lightly against her back as she uses the shaft of the spear to push low-hanging branches and vines away from her face. Birds cry in alarm as she disturbs them from their nests flying shrieking at the sky. Janis scans the trees for low-hanging nests as she treks forwards. Eggs are a rare treat, but they’re high in protein and one of the most nutritious options available to them. Something like eggs could help save the girl.

Janis barely stifles a shriek of joy as she spots a wreath of branches nestled into the branches of a nearby tree. She thrusts at the fluttering robin and narrowly misses, sending the bird away shrieking in alarm. Janis delicately scoops up the nest, grinning down at the three small blue eggs nestled in the twigs. It fits neatly into the pockets of her jacket, the eggs cradled safely against her body.

Spring shows itself all over the forest, in the small red berries and the tiny flowers sprouting from the ground. Janis stuffs her bag with dandelions and pine bark, already planning to return tomorrow. The forest is willing to feed them, if they’re ready to take the risks of the options they’re offered. Janis shies away from a bush of inviting scarlet berries, but takes her chances on acorns. She still needs a good kill, the girl needs meat, but this will be more than enough to feed them for tonight.

By evening, Janis returns with a rabbit she trapped against an oak tree clutched in her hand, the eggs still safely in her pocket with the full water bucket hung over her shoulder. “Damian! We’re gonna have a good day!”

Damian sticks his head out of the nurse’s office, his face splitting into a smile at the sight of her haul. “You really got water! Perfect, I’ll get her clean. How did you find all that?”

“It’s everywhere!” Janis exclaims, setting down the bucket of water. “I have a couple of eggs, dandelions, acorns...and this!”

She holds up the rabbit proudly, still glowing with victory. “I’m gonna make a soup or something for her, something she won’t choke on, and the rest of us can have dandelions or whatever.”

“Damn, all it takes to get you hunting is a pretty girl,” Damian teases, shoving her lightly. “Put the egg whites in the soup, cook the yolks for the rest of us. She needs all the protein she can get.”

Janis settles outside, carefully removing the blade from her spear to gut the rabbit. Making broth is easier than she expected. She grabs a handful of pine bark and a rabbit leg for herself before taking the pot in to Damian. “I did it...here, I guess…”

“You want to give it to her?” Damian offers, winking knowingly at her. “I want some fucking food, and you’re close to her anyway.”

“I don’t wanna hurt her…” Janis mumbles awkwardly, shifting on her feet. “I’ve never fed a coma patient…”

“Just drip it into her mouth,” Damian orders, handing her a spoon they swiped from the kitchen. “Go slow, but she shouldn’t choke or anything. I trust you.”

“Are you sure…?” Janis asks nervously. She really would like to help look after the girl, to ensure she keeps her promise, but she’s more than a little afraid she’s gonna hurt her worse instead of less.

“I’m sure. I’m gonna go get some rabbit before Aaron shovels it all into his giant face. Call me if you need me, yeah?”

Janis nods, watching him go as he theatrically winks at her, nodding towards the cot knowingly. She gets the distinct feeling he understands more than he tells. It’s comforting to know that no matter what, Damian will always understand.

There’s a hard oak chair sitting beside the girl’s cot, the back splintered and burned by the Blaze. Janis settles into it hesitantly, carefully ladling a small spoonful of her broth concoction. The girl’s chapped, dry lips are already open slightly, light puffs of air escaping from her mouth and nose as she breathes evenly. Janis smiles briefly at her peacefulness before gently dripping the soup into her mouth.

Thankfully, the girl doesn’t start thrashing or dying or choking. Janis exhales heavily in relief, smiling again, wider this time. Maybe she’s not as much of a grenade as she thought she was.


	14. Even When It All Comes Tumbling Down

Janis stirs quietly against the hard wooden floors, wincing as her head cracks against the unforgiving oak. She hasn’t been able to sleep since she first laid down after visiting the girl last night, too many memories crowding her head for sleep to make its way to her. She blinks the heaviness from her eyes, smacking her lips against the dry, bitter taste coating her parched tongue. Maybe giving the remainder of her water bottle to clean the girl’s wounds was a poor idea after all.

“Jan,” Damian hisses, nudging her with his foot. “Jan, wake up. Everyone else too. We need to talk. Now.”

Shuffling ensues at Damian’s persistent demands, irritated mumbles echoing throughout the small space. “What is it…?” Regina mumbles, her filthy blonde hair forming a tangled mat of bedhead over her scalp, the tightened, bubbling flesh on her face illuminated by the early streaks of dawn coloring the sky and shining through the windows.

“It’s our Jane Doe,” Damian replies, his face set with urgency. “She needs help. Now.”

“What happened to her?” Janis hisses immediately, jerking upright like a puppet on pulled strings. Protective fire surges through her veins, adrenaline pumping through her heated bloodstream. The fierceness of a tiger bolts through her, drawing her hand to her knife. 

“Jan, calm down,” Damian orders sharply, eyeing her wrist. “It’s not something you can stab. The wounds on her legs won’t heal. The infection’s really set in, and her fever’s skyrocketed. If we don’t get her antibiotics, and soon, she is going to die. What are we going to do?”

“Let her die,” Gretchen says harshly, cutting Janis off abruptly. “She’s a drain on our resources and she’s gonna live her life in a coma anyway. I vote we throw her in the river.”

“I vote we throw you in the river!” Janis fires back, drawing her knife from its sheath. “Saving her was your idea! What happened to the army we were gonna build, huh? Changing your mind now that it’s a little difficult?”

“She is not an army!” Gretchen screeches, feral anger raging in her gleaming brown eyes. “She is a girl, and she is a vegetable! That dream is dead, and there’s no need to keep throwing everything we have into reviving it! All I wanna do now is stay alive!”

A deep pang of sympathy for the other girl strikes deep in Janis’s core at her words. Gretchen lost everything she had for the Tower strike, and the only rewards they reaped were a skinny comatose girl and a near-death experience. But the sorrow is washed away in a tidal wave of protective fury for the girl Janis put herself through hell to save and the hairs on the back of her neck prick up with rage. 

“You wanna pitch a helpless girl off a bridge to stay alive. You wanna murder her in cold blood to stay alive. You wanna drown her in freezing water because she wasn’t what you were expecting. The Sears Tower was your idea, Gretchen, and now you have to deal with the consequences, just like all the rest of us do. We committed to taking her in when we carried her out of there, and now we do our best for her. And if you seriously think we should pitch a torture victim into the river just to give your sorry ass a better chance at making it another few days, you don’t fucking deserve that chance.”

Janis’s words hang poignantly in the air for a moment, drawing the gaze of the entire room directly to her mouth. Gretchen drops her eye, staring determinedly at Janis’s knees. For a moment, the only sound in the room is the whistling of the wind blowing through the empty window frames. 

Then Regina shatters the fragile silence. “That’s great, Janis, really great. Very noble of you. Doesn’t change the fact that she’s going to die in twenty-four hours, but very inspiring. What’s your suggestion? Please, enlighten us.”

For once, Janis doesn’t take the oh-so-tempting bait. As much as she’d like to chalk it up to character growth, it’s more of a scattered attempt to throw together a plan. As much as she hates to admit it, she can see Gretchen’s point. They don’t have the funds for antibiotics, and even if she managed to convince the others to help her, they wouldn’t have half they needed before it was too late. It might even be a mercy to end it now instead of letting the infection slowly sap her life away. 

But Janis’s promise rings in her ears, the feeling of the girl’s weak, desperate grip on her burning into her shoulders, and all she knows is that she can’t break that promise now, can’t let down another person she swore that she’d protect.   
The coins burn in her pocket, searing her leg and pumping adrenaline through her blood as her heart pounds frantically in her chest. Janis tears her eyes away from Damian’s expectant, worried ones, and in one jerky, desperate lurch, she tears the six coins from the seams in her pocket, flinging them to the floor before she can change her mind. 

For a moment, the room is completely silent, dull, disappointed stares fixated on her. Janis deliberately avoids Damian’s gaze, looking directly into Regina’s eyes. “There you go. That’s plenty to save her life.”

Regina stares at her for a moment, clearly annoyed but not at all surprised. “Fine. Aaron, get something that’ll take care of the infection. If there’s anything left over, get some bandages for her.”

“Regina, you’re really-” Aaron starts, his voice thick with disgust that makes Janis involuntarily dip her head a little in shame.

“Yeah, I’m really,” Regina shoots back, challenging him to defy her. “After all, it’s Janis’s money.” Something about that taunt cuts deeper into Janis than anything else Regina could have said. 

Aaron doesn’t move for a beat, the air throbbing dangerously as he faces off with Regina. But even with her looks stolen by the Blaze, Regina is as threatening as ever, and Aaron isn’t stupid enough to challenge her authority. Janis wouldn’t be particularly surprised if Regina tore his throat out with yellowed, rotting teeth to keep her power. 

His gaze dropping to the scorched floors, Aaron forces his way out, elbowing Janis roughly in the ribs as he shoves past her. The force knocks her to the ground, scraping her arms stingingly as she lands against the unforgiving boards. She doesn’t bother picking herself up. Her tattered jacket hangs over her like a weak shell, shielding her face from the judgemental glares she can feel burning through her back and into her soul. 

The other step past her like she’s not even there, nudging her roughly with their feet and bruising her ribs through the thin layers of clothing. Janis refuses to let more than a stifled hiss slip through her gritted teeth, not wanting to let them know they’ve hurt her.

Finally, the room falls silent, and Janis lifts her head slowly, tugging her jacket around herself. As she slowly lifts her head, wincing as her neck pops angrily in protest, she’s immediately confronted with Damian’s tight, angry face. “I thought you left…” Janis mumbles awkwardly, hiding her face behind the curtain of her matted hair once more. 

“You think I’d leave without talking to you first?” Damian snaps, and although he’s been sounding more and more fed-up with Janis lately, this is the first time she’s ever heard him sound truly angry at her. Knowing the rage in his voice is directed at her sends a freezing rush of ice through her veins, bringing stinging tears to her eyes. 

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Janis mumbles weakly, staring determinedly at the floor under her stinging legs. “No one said we couldn’t keep anything for ourselves…”

“Yeah, because we thought we had a basic understanding of being a team!” Damian retorts heatedly. “People who are working together to stay alive don’t keep things like money from each other, Janis! How long have you been hoarding this shit? What else do you have? Food? Clothes? Have you been building up your own little stockpile this whole time so you can leave the rest of us to the rats?”

“Damian, that’s not-” Janis protests weakly, dangerously close to sobbing as she hugs her chest protectively. “It’s not like that-”

“You’ve been clear from the start this isn’t a war you wanna be caught up in,” Damian snarls, already pushing himself to his feet, his bad leg quaking beneath him. “But hiding shit? Shit that could save lives? That’s just a bitch move, and I expected better from my friend.”

Damian limps awkwardly past her, his cane tapping the floor as Janis shakes slightly, biting her lip until the metallic tang of blood floods her mouth in a last, desperate attempt to keep back her tears. “And Janis? I definitely expected to matter more to you than the comatose kid you’ve said three words to since you met her.”

And then the door slams and Janis crumples to the tile, drawing her knees up to her chest and hiding her face in her tattered, musty pants, her eyes welling with tears that threaten to spill over any second. 

Of all the things she’s heard, of all the things she’s seen since the Blaze, Damian has just dealt her the worst blow she could imagine, and she can’t even begin to imagine coping with the aftermath of driving him out of her life.


	15. Waking Up

No one talks to Janis. If they have to refer to her, which they do their best to minimize, they call her she, enunciating the word to make clear their disdain. Janis walks with her head lowered, her eyes fixed on the ground. She does her best to stifle the whimpers of pain when the other “accidentally” kick her or shove her or knock her to the unforgiving ground. 

The girl is all she has left. 

Janis hunts every day to bring back broths to strengthen her, waking up hours before the others to gather what she can. She applies the small tube of antibiotic cream she sacrificed everything she had left to buy to the slowly healing infections on her legs, giving up her own blanket to warm the girl at night, when the cold wind whistles through the shattered windows. And in the little pockets of free time she manages to scrape together, she settles into the hard chair by her cot and takes the girl’s hand in her own, squeezing it lightly and stroking her filthy hair as she slumbers on.

A steaming bowl of broth made from a den of baby mice Janis found cradled in her arms, she settles into the familiar chair. “Hey…” she mumbles awkwardly, holding up the soup pointlessly. “I’m back...you’re probably getting sick of me by now…”

As expected, no response. Janis sighs and begins to slowly drip the broth into her mouth, praying that it will strengthen her. “I know it’s been a long time, and I don’t know how much longer you’re gonna be in this coma,” Janis continues, slightly less awkwardly. “But I’m gonna keep taking care of you until one of us dies, okay? I’m not gonna let them hurt you. I promised you I was gonna save you and I meant it.”

The eerie silence only increases the discomfort of speaking to a coma patient and Janis shifts a little in her seat, squeezing the girl’s hand a little more firmly. “I guess what I’m getting at is...please wake up, but...I’m not gonna let you die.”

The broth slowly disappears, but Janis remains, holding her hand. She was in the hospital when she was seven for possible kidney cancer. She went under the knife for a biopsy, and while she was asleep, her mother had to go to work. Janis doesn’t blame her for that; she knows her mother had no choice but to go in, to pay for the surgery if anything, but Janis woke up alone and in pain in a room she didn’t recognize with a man she didn’t know standing over her. She’d cried for hours from pain and fear, wailing for her mother to come back. Even though the biopsy results came back negative, the three days in the hospital left a serious impact on her, and Janis firmly believes that no one should wake up from that kind of sleep alone.

She’s done all her work for today, and it’s not like Regina will be speaking to her to assign her more. So Janis stays quietly by the girl’s side, squeezing her hand, lost in an ethereal world of thoughts and memories.

She’s never been lonelier in her life than she is now. She’s had Damian since seventh grade, always by her side, always reconciling with her when they argued. But Damian has never looked at her with the disgust that mars his face every time his eyes fall upon her now. Janis feels trapped in her loneliness, silent and miserable and so, so alone.

She and Damian used to hang out every day, going to his house after school. His gray tabby, Leonardo diCatrio, would greet her at the door, mewling for her attentions as soon as she entered. She was always his favorite. He disappeared during the Blaze; they never found him. Probably dead. Food for the forest predators. Janis tries not to think about that.

She’d scoop up Leo and follow Damian downstairs, purring cat in her arms. They’d flop onto the couch and squabble over the remote, battling for whose show they’d watch. Janis always contested for “American Horror Story;” Damian countered her with “Queer Eye.” Finally, one would wrestle the remote away from the other and they’d curl up together with Leo to watch far too much television and not get their homework done on time.

Janis can still recall the glee sparkling in his deep blue eyes as he smacked at her hands, trying to tug the slim black remote away from her. Her own cackling laugh echoes in her ears as she remembers scratching at him with her sharp nails, always ruining the polish layered on top. Leo’s mewls of protest as he was shifted abruptly during their mock battles. The time Damian accidentally elbowed her in the eye during a particularly intense squabble. The ensuing rush to cake her rapidly purpling bruise in foundation. The scramble to finish their homework at eleven at night, still grinning from the memories of their time together.

People always asked if Damian was her boyfriend. Janis would reply that he was better. Often, their peers would assume she meant they were fucking, a friends-with-benefits deal. Janis didn’t correct them. Her relationship with Damian always felt special, like it shouldn’t be shared too freely, and anyway it was hilarious to watch random boys congratulate him on “hooking up with Sarkisian.”

Not so hilarious when Damian proceeded to use his new “authority” to tell anyone willing to listen that Janis moos like a cow during sex, but Janis was still the first to admit she deserved it.

Memories of a happier time dancing through her mind, at first Janis barely feels the movement in her palm. But slowly, the stirring grows, and Janis snaps out of her reverie.

“Hey…” she murmurs cautiously, waiting with bated breath for a response. It was beginning to feel like Gretchen was right, that the girl would never wake...if it’s all a lie now, Janis isn’t sure if the tiny flicker of hope that remains inside her will survive the blow.

And then the girl’s eyes snap open and she locks eyes with Janis, eyes flickering with terror as she struggles weakly to rise, thrashing and kicking in the bed. “No! No, go away, no, no, go away, I don’t wanna, I don’t, just go away!”

“Hey, hey, easy!” Janis gasps, almost too overcome with shock to react. “Hey, hey, you’re okay, you don’t have to do anything except calm down, okay?”

The girl stares at her in shock and confusion, her eyes flicking back and forth between Janis and the cot. “I - I know you! You were - you cut me down - the rope - what happened?!”

“I’m Janis,” Janis murmurs soothingly, trying to appease her. “You’re safe now. We survived the elevator. You’re out of Chicago. We’re in the swamps. It’s just us out here. The Chess Force don’t know where we are. You’re safe.”

“Not in Chicago?” the girl mumbles, her panic giving way to confusion. Her eyes still flicker with fear, her frightened expression breaking Janis’s heart. 

“Not in Chicago,” Janis confirms, carefully scooting back to give the girl her space. “What’s your name?”

“Cady,” the girl mumbles, staring down at her bony knees, clearly struggling to process. “Cady Heron…”

“Nice to meet you, Cady Heron,” Janis replies, offering her her hand. “You wanna tell me how you ended up in Chicago?”


	16. The Knife of Never Letting Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Serious TW for sexual assault mentions

Within ten minutes, the entire group is crowded around Cady’s bedside, staring at her in a mixture of shock, interest and disgust. Cady’s hand reflexively creeps into Janis’s at the sight of Regina’s twisted, bubbling face, and Janis takes it instantly, squeezing it reassuringly. Like a newborn duckling, Cady seems to have imprinted onto Janis as someone who will protect her, and Janis is not about to let her down.

Cady looks questioningly at Janis, her face confused and frightened, and Janis gives her hand another gentle squeeze. “Go ahead, Caddie,” she murmurs, nodding towards the group. 

Cady nods slightly, her eyes fixated on the dirty sheets as she slowly opens her mouth, her voice a hoarse whisper. Wincing, Janis makes a mental note to bring her a glass of water when she’s done.

“I was homeschooled,” Cady murmurs, staring at the sheets. “That’s why we don’t know each other...I never went here. Then the Blaze happened, and I - I hid, under my bed. I made it out...my parents weren’t so lucky.” Her voice trembles and Janis flinches in sympathy, recognizing her own persisting grief in the girl’s voice. 

“I stayed in what was left of my house...until I got dragged out by the Chess Force. The servants like to bring back girls for the officers...a couple of coins to take your clothes off. I hated it, but it was - it was that or starvation.” The pain in her voice digs into Janis’s heart like tiger claws, drowning her in a wave of protective ferocity that makes her want to sprint into town and murder every officer she can find. She’s seen officers get a little too handsy with the local girls before, of course, but she never even imagined the corruption sinking this deep.

“I found out...people get chatty when they’ve had a good night,” Cady mumbles, her voice cracking on the words. “I started laying it on thick...calling them what they wanted, doing whatever they wanted, pretending I enjoyed it...I was their favorite. I never fought or cried.”

A million images of what Cady may have been forced to do flood Janis’s mind, and she tries to push it away, wincing at the idea. She squeezes Cady’s hand tighter, urging her to continue as Cady tightens her own grip.

“They paid me well,” Cady murmurs, cornflower blue eyes still fixated on her feet. “Might still be there..could look. Money, presents...anything I wanted. Even secrets.”

“Secrets?” Regina demands sharply, her ears pricking up at the word. “What kind of secrets?”

“Anything...I’d let them fuck me as a - a “goodbye present” and then ask where they were going the next day, when they’d be back...so I knew how soon I’d see them again, I’d say. I’d let my hand wander a little and they’d - they’d tell me.”

“I fucked my way to the top,” Cady continues, her voice barely a whisper. “Sometimes fifty or sixty in a day. They gave me pills, didn’t want me getting pregnant...and then one day I was in the general’s bedroom.”

Cady tugs as hard as her atrophied muscles can on Janis’s hand then, and after a moment, Janis pieces it together. After a moment’s hesitation, she clambers slowly onto the bed, wrapping an arm around Cady loosely to comfort her. Cady sighs for a moment, and then continues.

“I was in there for two days straight,” Cady murmurs, laying her head on Janis’s shoulder hesitantly. “He told me everything he knew. Codes, passwords, battle plans...all of it.”

“If you were so great, how’d you end up in the Tower, then?” Gretchen snaps, glaring at Cady and Janis alike with her unclouded eye. “She’s lying, Gina, she’s gotta be.”

“I’m not!” Cady insists, her voice cracking roughly. “I got cocky, okay? I thought I could screw my way out of anything and I stole a gun, okay? I took out three Chess Force soldiers, and then I fucked the general and he forgot all about it by the time he pulled his dick out of my ass, but Sin-Kana got involved, and she doesn’t have much need for sex slaves!”

Cady sobs then, tears starting to spill over her still-healing face. “She sent me off to the torture camp, and I spent half my time screaming and half my time serving as a sex toy for the officers there until Janis saved me!”

Still whimpering, Cady plunges her head into Janis’s shirt, hot tears soaking into the thin fabric. A bit awkwardly, Janis runs her fingers through Cady’s hair, murmuring some comforting nothingness about everything being okay now. The others won’t talk to her anyway; she’s free to focus on Cady while they have their little conversations about rebelling and overthrowing the government. 

And Janis is strangely okay with that.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Janis finally manages to soothe Cady, coaxing her to remove her head from Janis’s shirt and finish her story. Puffy-eyed and teary, Cady stares resentfully at Gretchen, clearly having already developed a distaste for her. Janis likes her more and more by the minute.

“Meeting!” Regina barks, clearly struggling to reinstate order, jerking her thumb sharply towards the door leading out of the nurse’s office. “Janis, come on!”

Janis sighs heavily, gently shifting away from Cady, wincing at her little whine of protest. ”Hey, I’ll be back, okay?” Janis promises, speaking more gently to Cady than she has to anyone in a long time. Gentleness feels strange on her tongue. “I’ll be back and I’ll bring you something to drink and some solid food, okay?”

Cady whines reluctantly, but shifts slowly out of Janis’s arms, drawing the tattered blankets around herself like a turtle disappearing into its shell. Janis gives her a little wave and follows the others out, refusing to drop her gaze under their glares. It’s not just her she’s fighting for anymore. She’s the only one here fighting for Cady, and she can’t let the girl down. Not after snatching her from the jaws of death so narrowly.

“So she’s useless,” Gretchen snaps immediately, as soon as the door falls shut. “She’s completely useless.”

“I’ll pick her brain,” Janis insists, glowering at the other girl. “Even if most of her information is outdated, she’ll at least be able to lead us through the Capitol Building.”

“After how much time and recuperation?” Gretchen counters, returning Janis’s angry glare. “I say we throw her out. See how long she makes it in the woods.”

“We’re not doing that,” Regina retorts, shutting Gretchen down instantly. “If she got that far before, she’ll get that far again. We can dye her hair with walnuts or something...get her a nice skirt or a dress…”

A bolt of fury like a thousand streaks of lightning flashes through Janis, sending the hairs on the back of her neck standing erect as her spine stiffens, now towering over Regina, her hand going to the spare blade strapped at her side. “You want to sell her back to the Chess Force?!”

“Janis, put the knife down,” Damian orders, his voice deadly serious behind her. Janis barely listens. 

“You want to throw a nice dress on her and sell her back as a sex slave to the Chess Force to be raped sixty times a day so she can bring you back a couple of passwords?! God, Regina, I knew you were a fucking bitch, but I never thought you’d stoop to human trafficking!”

“I’m trying to help us all survive!” Regina snaps, but her voice is taut with frustration and pain and even a flicker of fear as she eyes Janis’s hand on her knife handle. The knowledge that Regina fears her floods Janis with a wave of courage she never knew she had.

“If selling a rape victim back to her abusers on threat of starvation is your idea of survival, maybe it’d be better if we all died, and if you went first.” Janis ends her words with a snarl, showing her yellowed teeth as she whips around on her heel, starting back to Cady’s room.

She barely makes it a step before a rough hand grips her wrist and jerks her back. In a heartbeat, Janis’s knife is in her hand and Regina is pinned against the wall, the serrated kitchen knife pressed to her throat. A single crimson drop leaks down as Janis glares at Regina, thriving in the look of pure terror in her eyes. She’s stronger than Regina.

The others’ shouts fade into the background as Janis pins their leader to the wall, applying just enough pressure to draw the tiniest bit of blood from her throat. For one long, eternal moment, their eyes meet. Regina’s blue eyes flicker with terror as she pleads silently with Janis, more fragile than she’s been since the Blaze tore away her beauty.

Then Janis jerks her knife away, resheathing it neatly and letting Regina go. “That girl’s not going anywhere,” Janis hisses, glaring at Regina as she clutches at her throat. “You better believe me when I say I’ll kill to keep her safe.”

And then she whirls on her heel once more, stepping back to the door to Cady’s room, and this time no one tries to stop her.


	17. Wishing Only Wounds the Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for outing mention

If Janis was a pariah before, she’s been upgraded to public enemy number one. But she’s strangely okay with it, with being shut out and ignored and barred from all their plans. 

Less time in the meeting room means more time with Cady.

Janis wakes up at dawn and scours the forest for extra food, eggs or small game or plants. She hangs her blanket over Cady’s shattered window to block the sun and bugs from entering, allowing her to sleep later and get the rest she needs. She sells whatever’s left from her daily scavengings in the village to scrape together a few coins, hoping to get something for Cady to wear other than a repurposed garbage bag. 

Something about the girl inspires feelings in Janis she hasn’t felt in a long time. Cady makes her want to stay alive, and better yet, Cady gives her a reason to. 

“Why do you like me so much?” Cady questions, squeezing Janis’s hand. Janis doesn’t quite understand it, but Cady feels safer when she’s holding Janis’s hand, and she can’t deny those big blue eyes anything. “No one else does...I don’t even know all their names.”

“How could I not like you?” Janis shoots back snarkily, poking her arm. “I can tell you about the others, if you want...but I’ll warn you now, I don’t have a lot of nice things to say about them, and they probably don’t have many for me, either.”

“Please!” Cady begs, immediately perking up. “It’s so boring in here all by myself, I’ve got nothing to do.”

“You’ll regret saying that when you’re all strong again and Regina puts you to work catching frogs,” Janis jokes, flicking Cady again. “All right...so there’s Regina. She’s our leader, mostly because she said so and no one wants to fight her for it. She’s the one with the burned face, if you remember. If I wasn’t supposed to be working on being polite, I’d call her an ass-faced ruthless bitch who doesn’t care about anyone other than her damn self. But since I’m being polite, I won’t say that.”

Cady giggles, the sound sending odd tingles through Janis’s body, starting in her stomach and running through her limbs like sparks from a lit firework. “She doesn’t sound too good…”

“Just my opinion,” Janis says with a shrug. “Then Aaron...he’s the tall black guy, if you remember him. He used to be all right...then the Blaze killed off ninety percent of his local population of brain cells.”

Cady snorts a little, a ridiculously cute sound that sends a flood of pink rushing to Janis’s cheek. “I see why you said you were working on being polite.”

“Shut up!” Janis orders, laughing in spite of herself as she teasingly flicks Cady’s arm. “Then Gretchen...you probably remember her. One eye?” Cady’s face immediately twists into pure disgust at the memory and it’s all Janis can do not to snort herself. “Yeah, enough said. And then...Damian.” Her former best friend’s name falls heavy in her mouth like iron and Janis feels the mirth drain away like blood from a wound, leaving her in a pit of anguished, lonely sobriety.

“You sound like you don’t like him,” Cady murmurs, sobering as well as Janis’s face falls. 

Janis shakes her head quickly, her voice thick as she struggles to keep it together. “No...not, it’s not like that. I do like him...I like him a lot. It’s just...he doesn’t like me, that’s all. Not anymore, anyway.”

“Oh,” Cady mumbles, flushing a little. “Oh...were you two…?”

“No!” Janis exclaims immediately, the innocent curiosity in Cady’s voice raising her spirits a little. “No, no, oh my God, no, Caddie, no…”

Cady draws back a little, hurt flashing over her face at Janis’s vehement denial. “It was just a question…”

“Shit, Caddie, I’m sorry,” Janis explains quickly, chuckling a little in spite of herself. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, it’s just - Damian is so, so gay...and I guess I’m also...kinda...gay…” The last words come slowly, a bit painfully. Janis has never come out on her own before, never actually spoken the words as a confession instead of a confirmation. Even Damian found out from the vengeful senior who told the whole school Janis beat her in an art competition by going down on the female judge, heavily implying that all of Janis’s wins were rooted in similar sexual favors rather than in her talent. Despite the nonsensical nature of the argument, between the multiple male judges that awarded Janis prizes and the fact that she was too anxious to even speak to most adults back then, much less perform oral sex upon them, the story stuck, and Janis went from a revered artist to the girl who fucked a sixty-year-old woman for a fifty-dollar cash prize. Now the girl who made up the story is dead, as well as the judge and everyone who believed it, but fear still floods her at the memories of the taunts hissed after her in the hallways.

Pink immediately rushes to Cady’s cheeks and she averts her blue eyes, her throat moving as she swallows hard. “Oh...um...that’s - that’s cool,” she squeaks, her voice forced and pitchy. 

“Cads, I’m not gonna - not gonna do anything, if that’s what you’re thinking of,” Janis mumbles awkwardly, shifting on her feet. “I’m not gonna - you know - touch you, or anything...promise.”

“Oh!” Cady exclaims, turning tomato red. “Oh, oh, oh my God, no, that’s not - didn’t think you would -” But there’s a hint of truth in her hurried denial, and Janis steps back a few steps, awkwardness she thought she escaped when she was with Cady washing over her in waves of hot shame, and it’s hard to tell whose cheeks are hotter. 

“Caddie, it’s okay,” Janis mumbles, shuffling her feet ever more awkwardly. “I - I get it. I’ll leave you alone, I don’t wanna bother you-“

“Janis!” Cady yelps suddenly, her voice firm and serious, tinged slightly with fear. “Janis, don’t go. That’s not what I meant, and it’s not what I’m thinking. I trust you. And I - I don’t wanna be alone in here.” Her voice wavers at the end, real desperation glinting in her eyes, and Janis immediately stops shuffling her feet, guilt racking her for causing Cady this pain.

Her throat feels oddly tight and she has to swallow down the grapefruit-sized lump in it before she can answer, her voice huskier than normal. “I - I’m not going anywhere, Cads. Not as long as you want me here with you.”

And then Cady holds out her hands, and Janis grabs onto them willingly, and they cling to each other in silence that would be criminal to break.


	18. Hope Is Not a Plan (But Neither Is What We Have)

As soon as Cady can walk unassisted, Regina orders them all back into the meeting room. Since Janis came out to her, they’ve grown even closer than they had before, and it’s only Janis that Cady permits to escort her to the meeting, squeezing her hand with the grip of a python. 

Regina glares pointedly at Janis as she eases Cady into a seat, touching her hand for a moment before taking the chair next to her. “So kind of you to finally join us, Janis. Can we start now?”

Janis bristles at the taunt, the hair rising on the back of her neck as she growls, already about to bite back. But something warm and soft gently skims over her back, running over her thin clothes. An inexplicable calm washes over her at the gentle stroking and her muscles untense and Janis, for once, sheathes her claws before drawing blood. 

She’s not quite sure what the effect Cady has on her means, but her chest burns warm and there’s a fluttery feeling in her stomach that she hasn’t felt in a long, long time. 

As Janis’s hackles fall, Regina continues, a barely concealed flicker of surprise dancing over her face at Janis’s lack of venom. “It’s been nearly three weeks since we’ve done jack shit in this war. We have an asset now. What are we gonna do with her?”

“I’m not going back to that,” Cady snaps immediately, her voice quiet but fierce. “I’m not doing that!”

“That’s not on the table,” Janis promises immediately, resting her hand over Cady’s. “That’s absolutely not on the table.” Her words carry the hidden challenge across the room: Say it’s on the table. Say you’d be willing to do that. I dare you.

But Regina doesn’t take her bait, a decision that draws a huff of relief out of Janis. “What do you know, Cady? What can you tell me?”

“I can go through the entire Imperial Palace in the dark,” Cady replies immediately, her face set with concentration. Janis can’t help but notice she sticks her tongue out a little between her lips when she’s thinking, the fluttering in her belly increasing at the little spark of realization. “I know every room, hallway, and kitchen. I can get into any bedroom. I can pick the locks. And I know where Sin-Kana’s quarters are.”

“How do you know all that?” Aaron demands, eyeing her distrustfully. “That sounds like an awful lot of shit to just take your word for.”

“If you had fifteen men to f - visit in one night and you didn’t have the time to buy candles, you’d get pretty damn good at navigating the palace too,” Cady retorts, her own hackles rising at the sting of being doubted. “And I learned to pick locks because the halls aren’t heated and I would have frozen to death otherwise. As for Sin-Kana, I was in her chamber when she ordered me beaten with a spiked club and sent to the High Prison to die, so I’d say I remember the place.”

Pride burns in Janis’s chest as Cady silences the room, shame showing in the blushes of the others at the reminder of her torture. She lightly squeezes Cady’s hand, pleasantly surprised to feel no trembling. She wasn’t wrong when she told the others of Cady’s strength.

“Okay,” Regina says finally, trying to regain her gradually swaying control of the room. “So say we believe you really are the spy to end all spies. Can you get us to the Palace, Cady? Can you keep us alive far enough to get there?”

“I’m not as useless as you think I am,” Cady retorts, still bristling. “Sure, I’m still recovering, starving for months’ll do that to you. But I’m not stupid. My parents are - were scientists, I spent half my life in a rural province of Kenya. I can start a fire, I know how to cook pretty much anything, I practically memorized the book of worldwide poisonous and edible plants, and I can hit a moving apex predator with a tranquilizer gun from thirty yards. Can we take pitching me in the river off the table yet?”

Gretchen blushes furiously, her good eye fixated on the marred surface of the table. Janis has to bite her lower lip to hold back a laugh as Cady allows herself a tiny, victorious smile, holding her stare on the other girl for a moment longer before turning to face the table again, her chin lifted defiantly. Holly used to tilt her chin like that, adding an extra tiny bit to her diminutive stature. The urge to giggle dissipates like morning mist at the memory of her sister, the familiar pang of deep, unmoving grief plunging directly into Janis’s chest once more. Sighing, she closes her eyes for a moment, dully pondering how she can survive so many fatal strikes. Sometimes it seems as if an iron dagger would hurt less. The thought entangles into her nerves and she squeezes Cady’s hand a little tighter almost thoughtlessly, her hand naturally pressing the other girl for comfort without even a fading flicker of doubt. 

Warm, comforting pressure returns her squeeze and Janis knows she made the right choice.

Regina’s sharp, pitchy voice rips Janis back into the present day. “So you’re saying you wanna march on the Palace, sneak in, stab Sin-Kana, and overthrow the government?”

“You got a better plan?” Cady shoots back, matching Regina’s gaze unwaveringly. For a moment, Janis expects a catfight to break out then and there on the table. But then Regina sighs, the tension leaving her shoulders like helium leaking out from a poorly tied balloon.

“I suppose I don’t,” she sighs, steepling her fingers like the spire of a cathedral. “Start preparations. We leave at dawn in three days.”


	19. A Little Spot of Brightness

Janis sleeps in Cady’s room on the night before their departure. Their packs are full, the water tins heavy, her spear sharpened to a deadly point. After some scavenging, Janis scraped up another heavy kitchen knife to arm Cady, directing her to stab instead of throw. Her hand still feels empty without the comfortable weight of the knife she buried in the heart of a Chess Force officer.

Now they lay quietly together on the cot, hands loosely entwined as they stare up at the patchy ceiling. Janis is too anxious to sleep and from the sounds of her breathing beside her, Cady is experiencing the same thing.

They both pushed for this plan, harder than anyone else. Cady guaranteed their safety and Janis took every other option off the table when she held the knife to Regina’s throat. If this plan fails, the blame will fall squarely on their shoulders. And then Regina might actually kill her.

Cady’s warmth against her slender body gives no comfort. The familiar feeling of her body against Janis stabs her in the heart, acuting the pain of the loss of Damian. The memory of his gentle hugs burns sharp in her brain, reminding her of how comforting his arms were, wrapped around her body when it all hurt so much she could barely breathe. He always knew just when she needed a hug.

He protected her, and she stabbed him in the back for it. She has no right to miss him, for she was the one who drove him away.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Cady murmurs, her husky voice effortlessly pulling Janis out of her head. “You’re stiff…”

Janis sighs, shaking her head a little. “Worried. Anxious. Sad…scared. I’m really, really scared, Cads.”

“Me too,” Cady whispers, squeezing Janis’s hand tighter. “I’m really scared to go back…”

“You could have lied,” Janis offers suddenly, shifting a little to face her. “Said you didn’t know anything. I wouldn’t let them hurt you…”

“And if they decided they would, you could stop them?” Cady asks lightly, nudging her a little with her bony elbow. “I’m scared, Jan, but I’m not a coward, and I’m not that selfish. Sin-Kana needs to go down, and if I have to be a little frightened to do that...I can do that.”

Janis smiles a little at that, pressing Cady’s hand a little firmer for a moment. “That’s - that’s really brave of you, Caddie.”

“Can I ask you something?” Cady asks hesitantly, a tiny tremor entering her voice. “It’s okay if you can’t answer, but it’s been bugging me lately…”

“Fire away,” Janis encourages. “I’ll do my best.”

“Why - why me? There were plenty of us up there, you could have grabbed anyone...why’d you pick me?” Cady’s voice trembles a little more now, and Janis senses an underlying tone of guilt.

“I wasn’t really thinking of it as picking anyone,” Janis replies after a moment, taking a minute to weigh her words. “I was the first to find you, but our original plan was to evacuate everyone. You were just the closest moving person I saw, I figured I’d take you out and get help...and then we got caught, and…”

“Just - just luck?” Cady ascertains, tilting her body so that she and Janis lay forehead to forehead, hands entwined. 

“Just luck,” Janis promises, squeezing her hand. “I’m incredibly goddamn lucky it was you I pulled down. I like you, Cads, I like you a lot...and I like the person I am when I’m with you. You make me wanna be better, Caddie, you make me wanna do better and try harder and get off my sorry ass and do something with my life, and I’m really, really glad you’re here.”

In the semi-darkness, Janis just barely makes out Cady’s faint smile, yellowed teeth illuminated by the moonlight. “I’m really, really glad you’re here too.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Regina rouses them as soon as the first rosy tints of dawn streak the horizon like Janis’s old watercolors, nudging them awake and pushing their packs upon them. A burst of warmth floods Janis’s chest as Cady moans discontentedly, rolling and burying her face into Janis’s shirt sleepily. As desperately as Janis wants to let her sleep, wrap an arm around her and enter service as Cady’s pillow, Regina’s barked orders force her up, and she settles for gently shaking Cady and calling her name softly until the other girl blinks sleepily at her, round blue eyes hazy with sleep. “What’s the matter…?”

“Cads, we gotta get up,” Janis murmurs, gently prodding her shoulder. “It’s time to go…”

Cady reluctantly nods, clambering off of Janis and pulling herself upright. As she stretches her arms, yawning widely, a small sting of disappointment bolts through Janis at the loss of Cady. She knows they have to go, but a strong part of her is in protest at leaving Cady’s embrace. 

Cady’s hand slips into hers as they group around Regina in the yard, and Janis doesn’t hesitate to squeeze back.

The chill of the early dawn air nips at Janis’s face and she shuffles to keep warm, wishing she had a coat. Her thin jacket isn’t nearly enough to lock out the chill. Regina takes her natural place at the head of the pack, turning to face the rest of them. When she speaks, her voice is graver than Janis has ever heard from her before.

“This is a long shot. We might not even make it through the woods. And if we make it to the Palace…” Regina’s voice trails off, the words that would have followed hanging in the air. “This might be it.”

Cady tightens her grip on Janis’s hand, the faintest quiver spreading through her body, and as much as she wants to comfort her, Janis can find no words. The harsh truth is that they will most likely be killed on this venture, either by the woods or the Chess Force, and any survivors will be hung to die in the execution wood. The best Janis can offer Cady is that she’ll kill her cleanly before she lets her be brutally executed, and she can’t even promise her that.

“But this is our best shot at saving what’s left of this hellhole,” Regina continues, her voice growing stronger. “And if we’re ever gonna rebuild this world, we need to get rid of the crazy fascist dictator that’s taken it for herself. So let’s shove a knife up Sin-Kana’s ass!”

It’s the most Janis has reverberated with Regina since she smacked someone calling Damian slurs.

Damian…

God, she misses Damian.

Hesitantly, Janis glances towards him, trying desperately to meet his eyes. She knows he’s still angry with her, and she’s certain that the wounds of her betrayal are still fresh and stinging, but they’re about to march to what will almost certainly be their deaths, and she doesn’t want to die without having made things right with her best friend of nearly twenty years. But Damian doesn’t meet her eyes, deliberately looking away into the swamps, and Janis reluctantly lowers her own gaze. Forgiveness, it seems, will have to wait for another day. Assuming she lives to see that other day.

Without hesitation, Janis nimbly scoops up Cady’s pack, slinging it over her shoulder. Before Cady can do more than open her mouth to protest, Janis cuts her off. “You’re the key to all this, Cads. You’ve gotta be at your best and able to run, okay? I’m a lot more expendable than you. Doesn’t matter if I get away or not. So let me take the damn pack.”

Cady doesn’t look happy about, the corners of her mouth turning down, but she shuts her mouth anyway, most likely aware that Janis is right, even if she doesn’t like it. Janis sighs inwardly in relief, glad Cady bought her story rather than questioning her real motives: protecting the smaller woman. Even though Cady has healed significantly since her arrival and is certainly capable of carrying her own pack, a hint of chivalry has stirred in Janis’s chest and it feels wrong to let Cady haul her own bag.

Pink stings her cheeks, a light dusting of rosy blush coloring her face, and Janis swallows hard, trying to shake it off. It’s not easy to admit, but her feelings for Cady are burgeoning from protective friendship to the beginnings of a crush. And now of all times is not the moment to be falling in love, especially not with her teammate and only friend. Alienating Cady would leave her completely alone, marooned in the sea of the apocalypse, and Janis cannot afford to be distracted by love during the most important battle of her life.

So, head held high and packs held securely, Janis marches after her team, taking comfort in the rub of her spear handle in its strap by her side. She’s going to need it.


	20. And It All Goes Dark Again

Within an hour, the glow of embarking on a heroic march to free their home from the boot of a ruthless dictator has faded and Janis is ready to go home. Or lay down and die. Or nap for ten hours. Anything sounds better than continuing to tromp through the unexplored swamp territory.

Stinging bugs hum in the air, their high-pitched whines sounding like sirens as they latch onto Janis’s flash, their razor-sharp needles digging into her skin and leaving her with swollen red itchy lumps the size of quarters. Bullfrogs croak alarm as they splash through the solid foot of standing water, startling away any chance at a decent meal. The water is far too high for Janis’s crumbling boots to withstand, and tiny twinges of pain in her legs signify the ever-growing probability that she’ll be scraping off leeches when they settle for the night. Snakes slither through the water, their scaly backs occasionally surfacing the peaks of foamy green slime coating the marsh. All Janis can do is pray that they’re harmless rather than deadly water moccasins as she stomps forward, knowing full well that her boots won’t withstand a bite from a venomous snake.

Beside her, Cady tromps forward almost silently, small hisses of pain escaping her as her legs cry out in response to the sudden strain that she’s grown unaccustomed to. Knowing that she’s hurting fills Janis with a primal, desperate rage, needing more than anything to save Cady from whatever’s hurting her. But the only thing that could help her would be to carry her, and the weight of the two packs bogs Janis down enough as it is.

To distract herself from the pain and misery of the march, Janis retreats into her own head once more, now drawn to think about Cady rather than her past. She’s admitted to herself that she likes her friend, and that it’s not in a platonic way, but what comes next? Should she tell her? Hide it? Hope Cady runs up and makes out with her one day? 

Not to mention the complications with Cady’s history of relationships; she might not be ready for one ever, and Janis completely understands that, but the last thing she wants is to make things weird between her and Cady. She’d rather pine forever than break Cady’s trust.

“Lunch break!” Regina barks, tossing her bag down onto a lichen-dripping boulder. “Eat quickly. We don’t have much time.”

Janis prods irritably through her bag, quickly depositing Cady’s into her lap so she can choose her own meal from their limited supplies. A quick probing reveals that she doesn’t have much more than a few hunks of crumbling bread and a few handfuls of pine bark. Nothing she can afford to deplete so early on in their journey. “Anything in here we can eat?” Janis calls, searching the marsh for signs of food. “We don’t have much, if we can find something we should grab it.”

For a moment, Regina opens her mouth to retort, but then shuts it again. Probably shocked that Janis actually had a good idea instead of a snarky comment. “There’s probably something. There’s gotta be some plant-eating creature out here that fits into the food chain. I’m not ready to run the risk on snakes.”

Janis half-considers diving for a snake then and there. But then she remembers that Cady is beside her, and that she’s trying to be better for Cady, and she slowly lowers her hand from her spear to reach for a broad-leaved plant instead. By her side, she hears Cady quietly let out her breath in relief. 

Maybe Janis really is being better.

After a few moments of silent searching, Gretchen suddenly whoops, waving a fist full of soft, light green leaves. “These taste great!”

“But are they going to kill me?” Janis calls back, taking a hesitant sniff of a floating mat of moss and immediately recoiling. “Okay, definitely not that one…”

“Do I look like a zombie?” Gretchen shoots back, stuffing a mouthful of the leaves into her mouth.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Janis mumbles under her breath, and by her side, she swears she hears Damian almost chuckle. It’s stifled, brief, immediately covered up, and she knows it’s a long road yet to reaching his forgiveness, but she hasn’t had even a hint of his laughter in far too long. Hearing it again is like a breath of fresh air in the muggy, stifling swamp. “All right, fine, I’m coming!”

Gretchen’s already shoveled down a mouthful of the leaves, green juice trickling down her chin. “They’re everywhere!”

Hesitantly, Janis reaches down, scooping up a couple of the green leaves. They’re very soft, almost feathery, thick veins running through the flaccid flesh. She hesitantly nips a bit off the edge, immediately moaning out loud as a subtle, refreshing mint flavor gushes over her tongue. The leaves are deceptively juicy, cool flavor exploding over every taste bud as Janis plunges a hand into the greenery, already groping for more.

Cady seems to take Janis’s enthusiasm as verification that the greens are indeed safe and dives in as well, and that’s all it takes to draw in the others. The leaves are bountiful and delicious, and they’ve been hungry so long that no one hesitates to eat their fill and then some, stuffing their packs with more for the road.

Janis is practically humming as she walks, taking long, lively strides through the woods. The meal sits pleasantly in her belly, a comfortable fullness she hasn’t enjoyed in far, far too long. Maybe they should just stay here, live out their days in the swamp. Janis could get used to eating like this.

An hour or two later, she isn’t nearly so happy. The leaves churn unsettlingly in her stomach, acid reflux stinging her throat in protest as she stumbles forward, her free hand pressed to her troubled midsection in an unsuccessful attempt to soothe it. Normally she wouldn’t be one to admit weakness, but this isn’t normal at all, and that requires a little abnormality from Janis as well. “Anyone else feeling bad? ‘Cause I feel like I’m about to hurl-”

Before Janis can finish, Cady lurches off to the side, barely making it two steps before she doubles over, bracing her hands on her knees as she retches. After a moment of shocked silence, Janis snaps out of it, stepping forwards to pat Cady’s back gently. “Shh, Cads, everything’s gonna be okay…”

Two minutes later, when Gretchen staggers over to vomit into a bush, Janis isn’t so sure that everything’s going to be okay. This isn’t just a lack of being accustomed to meals that size. Something was seriously wrong with those plants, and they’re all going to be feeling the effects, probably sooner rather than later. 

Janis stays by Cady’s side, determined to stay by her at least until the vomiting stops. But it doesn’t stop and doesn’t stop, leaving Cady struggling to stay on her feet from dehydration as her stomach convulses, trying to rid her of every scrap of leaf toxin. Finally, Janis can’t fight the inevitable any longer and turns away as much as she can to spare Cady the visual before ejecting the contents of her stomach in what she’s certain is the most violent and horrible way imaginable.

Once it starts, it doesn’t let up. Within minutes Janis is dizzy and trembling, sweat pouring down her face as her muscles strain to obey her brain’s commands to vomit up everything. Her arms tremble and her knees have become Jell-O under her..oh, God, not Jell-O…

Just the thought of the jiggling mass of sickeningly sweet gelatin flips Janis’s stomach once more and she stumbles, saved from faceplanting into her own vomit by catching hold of an overhanging vine.

At this point, Janis doesn’t care if she lives or dies. Stomach still churning, she collapses onto a sandy dune protruding from the marsh water, a thin trail of bile trickling from her dry, chapped lips as she lays prone against the damp sand, wishing for blissful unconsciousness. She can’t even hear her friends over the dull buzzing in her ears, her eyes too glazed with tears of exertion to catch sight of anyone other than a blurry side view of Cady.

At long last, after what feels like an eon of fruitless dry heaving, the universe grants her wish and Janis sinks into beautiful, dark, deep unconsciousness.


	21. Going Forwards

The first thing to pierce the sea of numb blackness is a delicate cool sensation spreading across Janis’s forehead. She’s still blinded by fever, but the cold eases some of the numb feeling, sensation returning to her dead limbs. Awakening from the fevered coma is a slow, painful process, like floating up from the bottom of a deep pool, slowly rising towards consciousness once more. Janis hovers weightlessly in the void between consciousness and blackness, her mind sluggish and slow like a sloth. Every now and then, little wisps of the still-moving world above her waft down to her barely-conscious mind. A soft voice she doesn’t recognize, a hand on her cheek, something cool dripping from her lips. Tiny reminders that there still is a world to wake up to, even one charred by ash and flames.

“Can you hear me?” a thin, raspy voice murmurs, startling Janis slightly from her monotonous train of thought. “You’re moving your eyes…”

Janis slowly opens her eyes, immediately closing them again as light streams into them like a spotlight shining directly on her face. “Your eyes aren’t adjusted,” the voice assures her, a calloused hand pushing her hair back from her forehead, and Janis realizes with a shock that her hair feels soft and clean against her skin. “Give it a few moments, child…”

“‘M not a child,” Janis mumbles hoarsely, immediately feeling the blood rush to her cheeks at the immaturity of her response. “Bright…”

“You’ve been sleeping for nearly a week, you’re not used to the light,” the voice says briskly. Shuffling ensues, and then there’s a cup pressed to Janis’s chapped lips. “Drink. You’re dehydrated, and to me, you are very much a child.”

Janis hesitates for a moment, unwilling to accept a drink from a stranger who may very well be a Chess Force recruit attempting to poison her. But at the same time, if this stranger wanted her dead, she would have stabbed Janis with her own spear while she slept. She can be fairly confident the drink is safe, Janis reasons, even if the giver isn’t. 

Cool water, spiked with a fruity tang not unlike citrus, washes over her parched tongue as Janis sips hesitantly from the cup, slowly opening her eyes again. This time, the light is bearable, if not comfortable, and Janis turns to face her visitor.

It’s a woman, small and bird-like, her hands bony and arthritic but strong and calloused. Her wide brown eyes are too large for her thin, pallid face, her mousy brown hair cut into a short but clean chin-length bob. She reminds Janis of the mockingbirds that used to perch outside her windows with her dirty grey smock, the cup gripped firmly in her claw-like hands. 

Somehow Janis has been moved inside, a rough-hewn wooden roof shading her from the sun. The small hut is furnished with small pieces carved from what look like tree stumps, making up a table and chair in one corner and a miserable-looking bed in the other. As Janis stares up at the ceiling, a thin, fine shower of dirt rains down, dusting her lightly. The woman sighs, lightly brushing the dirt from her face. “Sorry about the dirt...the difficulties of living inside a hill. My roof is ninety percent sod with a couple of boards for structure.”

“Where am I?” Janis mumbles, her eyes flicking around for her companions. “Who are you? Where are my friends?”

“Easy,” the woman orders, nudging the rim of the wooden cup against her lips. “Best not to get worked up, you’ve been ill for nearly a week. You’re in my home, near absolutely nothing you’d find on a map. Your friends are safe. The girl with the burned face is still quite unconscious and resting in the corner. The others have been asked to do small menial chores in exchange for your shelter here. They should return shortly.”

“Who are you and why are you helping us?” Janis demands forcefully, trying to push herself up onto her elbows. “You’re not Chess Force, are you? I wanna know why-”

Before she can finish her sentence, her arms give out on her and Janis collapses backwards, the woman’s hands rushing to ease her head to the hard-packed dirt floor. “I told you to rest,” she scolds lightly, pushing Janis back against the earth. “My name is Veronica, not that that means anything to you. I would die before I joined the Chess government. And I am helping you because I found seven children lying unconscious and fevered in the forest, and I did not wish to have your blood on my hands.”

“Did you carry us all here…?” Janis mumbles in confusion, her weak reserves of strength nearly drained by the attempt to rise. Exhaustion already saps at her again, sleep tugging at her lightly.

“I needed help with the two boys. The rest of you were quite easy to move. You haven’t been eating nearly well enough.”

“Because there is no food,” Janis replies, her eyes growing heavier by the second. “Just barely stayin’ alive…”

“Rest, child,” Veronica murmurs, stroking Janis’s hair back once more in a motherly gesture that sends a wave of sorrow crashing over Janis, remembering her own mom. “There will be food when you wake.”

Janis barely manages a nod before letting her eyes fall closed. Sleep washes over her immediately, carrying her back to the blackness she’s spent so long in over the past week. Just before she loses all feeling in her limp, exhausted body, she feels a soft, silky covering like a fur pelt laid over her, the edges pressed slightly under her sides. Janis hasn’t been tucked in since she was seven years old, when she decided she was too old for the practice, as much as it comforted her. 

And for once, sleeping feels safe.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Janis opens her eyes once more, Veronica is gone and Cady is kneeling over her, her face pinched and drawn but with a hint of color in her pallid cheeks. “Are you hungry?” she asks softly, her voice rasping slightly. “You have to be, you haven’t eaten in so long…”

As if to verify Cady’s words, Janis’s stomach growls, a stab of hunger pain shooting through her. “Starving. Veronica said there was food…?”

“Food and information,” Cady promises, extending a hand to help her up. “Regina’s finally up as well, which means we all survived. No more strange plants, I think.”

“Definitely not,” Janis agrees, wincing at the memory of the nausea. She’ll be lucky if she can ever tolerate the flavor of mint again. “What do we have to eat?”

Cady’s eyes gleam as she responds. “Venison. A whole deer, cooked and ready. And Veronica’s promised to fill us in. She says she can help, and after what she did for us, I trust her.”

“Me too,” Janis admits, stumbling a bit as she settles onto a makeshift bench formed from a log. Her legs still haven’t recovered from whatever was in those leaves, leaving her dizzy and staggering like she hasn’t found her sea legs - or land legs, technically. Hopefully they don’t stay away long; falling on her face is the last thing her weakened body needs. “God, what was in that stuff?”

“You stumbled upon mutated mint plants.” Janis startles as Veronica steps quietly into the dugout, a pot cradled in her bony hands. “The fallout was heavy here. Many formerly safe plants have become dangerous. The variety you fell prey to was a mutation adapted to grow in water, protected from being bitten by deadly toxins, affecting humans and insects alike. You were fortunate that your immune systems managed to purge much of the poison for you. I was able to neutralize the remainder with a homemade broth. You still have traces of the toxin in your system, hence the dizziness. It will pass.”

“How’d you find out about the mint?” Cady asks, eyeing her in confusion. A ghost immediately darkens Veronica’s face, eyes dimming as if covered by a dark cloud.

“We discovered what was safe by means of trial and error,” she replies stiffly, her voice sharp with old pain. “Some fell victim to the error.”

Cady appears ready to probe further, but Janis silences her with a touch of her hand. She knows that look, that tone, all too well. Veronica is grieving, and the cloud over her face darkens her as much as the same cloud has darkened Janis. Seeing her same pain reflected in the older woman’s face tugs slightly at Janis’s heart, and her trust in Veronica strengthens even more when she sees a hint of herself in their savior.

“Where are the others?” Janis quickly provides a change of subject, doing her best to convey that she understands.

“Smothering the fire and fetching water. They should return in a few minutes.” Veronica blinks gratefully at Janis, giving her a brief smile before placing the pot down upon the table. “When they return, we will eat and I will tell you what I can.”

The others troop in slowly, still a bit wobbly on their feet, informing Janis that they’re not quite over the leaves either. Veronica passes around rough-hewn wooden bowls, presenting them each with a generous ladle of soup. Janis hesitantly sips at the edge of the bowl, not sure how her stomach will react. The rich, silky taste of venison broth instantly floods her taste buds and her fears instantly disappear as she sucks down the rest of the meal, not even caring that she’s slurping loudly as she does so.

As Janis sips on a wooden cup of water, odd-looking berries she doesn’t recognize floating in the clear liquid for flavor, Veronica begins her story, amber eyes staring into the crumbling walls of dirt. “You are a little less than three days travel from the Palace. I can send you on a path that will lead you through relatively little peril. The remainder of your travel should be simple. It will be what awaits you in the palace that troubles you next.”

“Don’t suppose you have any assault rifles lying around?” Janis jokes weakly, only half-kidding. Gretchen elbows her sharply, but Veronica cracks a smile, a pleasant surprise after so many months of glares and snarls.

“Sorry, kid. I’m pretty pacifistic. Not much for me to shoot out here. But I can furnish you with food and supplies for the trip, as well as any weapons I am able to gather. I believe your goal is to overthrow Sin-Kana?”

Solemn nods around the circle as their eyes briefly lock. Spoken out loud, it sounds like madness. Even in Janis’s mind, it sounds like madness. Yet this is their only hope to salvage the smoldering embers of their world. 

“I will be honest. You are very, very brave, but you are also foolish. My advice would be to run very, very far away. Find some unscathed peak untouched by her soldiers and live out your days there in safety.”

It’s an oh-so-tempting offer. Run away and never look back, leave behind all the ashes and the graves and the blood oozing from the wounded earth, run away into the mountains with the last few people she cares about, make amends and mend the scars and live out her days in some semblance of peace.

But Holly’s blood still drips from her hands, gushing the menacing scarlet that washes her dreams in a flow of red. This final desperate charge is her last remaining chance to wash her hands of the gleaming lifeblood she can still see oozing through her filthy fingers, and if Janis still has enough of a soul to be worthy of a final wish, it’s that she die free. Or at least with one real, unselfish deed to her name. Maybe she can rid herself of some of her guilt.

The locket burns fiercely in her bag, seeming to scald her skin even through the layers of fabric as Janis tilts her chin up defiantly. “Going back is not an option.”

Veronica sighs, brushing a strand of mousy brown hair behind her ear. “I did not think you would. But I had hoped. Very well. If you insist on pursuing this attack, then I will lend you all the aid I can. I very much hope you succeed.”

Her brown eyes burn into Janis’s very core, her own chin tilted up to match Janis’s posture. She would be a fool to mistake the challenge in her eyes.

Then in one moment, their connected gaze is broken as Veronica turns away, the burning sensation persisting in Janis’s chest. “You must rest, children. I will gather what I can give.”

And with that, the meeting is broken apart, leaving Janis sitting still and silent on the earthen floor. All she can do is pray that she was not wrong in sending them forwards.


	22. A Word of Advice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update! I covered a friend’s shift at work today and completely forgot to post!

Janis finally manages to snag a few moments alone with Veronica when the others have disappeared into the woods for sustenance, leaving them behind as protection and an alarm system. Feeling rather like she did as a small child when she was sent to visit the guidance counselor to “talk out her feelings,” Janis sheepishly inches forwards, intently studying the tips of her crumbling boots. Noticing she isn’t alone, Veronica glances up from stoking the small fire. “What can I help you with, kid?”

“I...um…” Janis shifts awkwardly, feeling clumsier by the second as her tongue seems to swell too large for her mouth. “I was kinda hoping...you could maybe...help me with something…? Or a couple of things, I guess...I’m sorry, I know this is probably weird and you don’t really know me, but I - I don’t really have anyone else to talk to…” Cheeks burning like the glowing embers Veronica stokes smoothly with the stick, Janis stumbles awkwardly over the words, awaiting the inevitable poor reaction. What was she thinking, she doesn’t even know this woman…

“Sure, kid. Come sit down? You look like you’re gonna keel over here in a minute.” Veronica flops back onto a log, patting the rough wooden surface invitingly. At the frightened, hesitant look on Janis’s face, she softens a little, extending one hand. “I was in my early twenties once too, you know. Not much easier than being a teenager, is it?”

Janis shakes her head quickly, settling onto the log beside Veronica. “Even minus the apocalypse...no one told me how to be twenty-two.”

“Wasn’t much better back when I was a kid,” Veronica responds, poking encouragingly at a glowing coal. “What did you want help with, kid?”

“So much,” Janis sighs, the tension starting to drain from her shoulders as she watches Veronica. “The big two, I guess...my best friend hates me and I’m falling for my other friend. And I want him back, especially since we’re doing this...I don’t wanna die with him hating me, or without ever fixing things between us, and then...Cady…”

“You like her, don’t you?” Veronica inquires casually, stoking the fire peacefully, ignoring Janis’s surprised stiffen. “Yeah, it’s that obvious, and no, she doesn’t know. But do you want her to?”

“I - I don’t know,” Janis stammers, still taken aback by her apt observation. “I mean, I like her, I really do, but...I don’t know if I wanna tell her, or if she likes me, or if I’d just - you know, end up triggering some old stuff again for her...I don’t know.”

“It’s okay to not know,” Veronica says gently, her calloused, bony hand gently brushing over the top of Janis’s. “And your best friend? What about him?”

“It’s my fault we’re fighting,” Janis sighs, the words painful to speak but bitterly true. “He tried to help me, he really did...but I stabbed him in the back, I did it to everyone...and now he hates me. Which he should. But I wish he didn’t.”

“You haven’t been kind to your friends,” Veronica remarks, and it’s not a question. “In fact, you’ve been rather cruel to them. And they are justified in their anger.”

“Gee, thanks,” Janis mumbles, her face burning slightly as she stares at the ground. Veronica’s words sting, and what’s worse is that they’re true. She really has earned all the anger and distrust her companions have thrown at her. Thinking back on what she’s said to them, what she’s still been saying to them, brings a prickling sensation to her eyes, an uncomfortable pricking that she tried without success to blink away. She has become a monster, a cruel, uncaring menace to the people that ought to be her closest friends.

“I wasn’t finished,” Veronica rebukes gently, resting her hand on top of Janis’s once more, and this time she doesn’t pull away. “No one is beyond forgiveness. But you have to ask for it.”

Janis nods a little, her eyes still prickling with an uncomfortable dampness. “I have to apologize.”

“You have to ask for their forgiveness,” Veronica corrects, her hand comforting on Janis’s. “It’s not just being sorry, Janis. It’s asking for forgiveness and promising to change. That’s what will mend your relationships. Sorry has become shockingly empty. Do not devalue its worth any further.”

“O-okay,” Janis manages weakly, brushing her free hand gently over her brimming eyes. “I - I’ll do that. I’ll try it. I don’t - don’t wanna do this alone…”

Veronica nods, freeing Janis’s hand. “A wise choice. My advice is to make amends now and wait till after your battle to speak to Cady. Make right all debts before you go, and only consider more afterwards.”

Her words ring true once more and Janis nods agreement, too choked up to speak around the massive lump in her throat. As she rises from the log, however, Veronica catches her hand gently. “It’s okay to be hurting, Janis. I’m hurting too. I lost my family too. It’s okay to be in pain. But it’s not okay to put that pain on the ones you love. Because then you’ll only both be hurting ever more for what you’ve done to each other.”  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Damian…?”

Janis’s voice is barely a murmur, careful not to wake the others. Apologizing to the others isn’t something she’s prepared to do; not yet, at least. She’s not even really prepared to apologize to Damian. But he’s been her best friend for so many years, and she wants to let him know she’s sorry before she dies, which she very well may in the Palace. He deserves that much from her. 

For a moment, silence. Then he speaks, voice too clear and unmuddled to have come from sleep. He’s been lying awake, at least for a while. “Yes?”

Janis shuffles awkwardly, staring down at her shoes. Thinking about doing this was nearly insurmountable. Doing it is ten thousand times harder. But Janis reaches deep inside and finds her courage, her voice hardly trembling when she speaks. “Can we talk…?”

Then there’s more silence, tenser this time. Then he sits up, his features hidden in the shadows, and Janis isn’t sure if she’s more scared to see his face or to not meet his eyes.

He follows her outside in silence to stand bathed in the silver light of the moon. The faint light illuminates his face in the shadows, just enough for Janis to see how frighteningly impassive he is. He waits in front of her, arms crossed and lips pressed thin, waiting for her to speak. 

Janis swallows hard, unable to clear the massive lump building in her throat. “Damian, I-” The words hitch painfully in her throat like claws and she forces back a sniffle, determined not to cry. Not here, not now. Damian deserves better than a teary apology. The least she can do is give it to him straight.

He stands quietly in front of her, not glaring or pushing, just waiting to hear what she woke him up for. He’s always been so patient, so kind...the memory of laying her head across his knees, his neatly manicured nails running through her hair flashes before her eyes, and the words spill from her mouth like water gushing through a broken dam.

“Damian, I’m so fucking sorry, for the money and just for being a fucking bitch in general, I’m not gonna try to make excuses, I was a shit person and I did a lot of shitty stuff, to you and to everyone else but mostly to you, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry I treated you like that and I’m sorry I lied to you and I’m sorry I hid things from you, I was so fucking stupid…” Janis’s voice trails away as she gasps for breath, her whole body trembling slightly like she’s just run a marathon. “I’m sorry, Damian. I’m not asking you to forgive me...I don’t deserve that. But I wanted you to know that I’m sorry, and that I’m trying to be a better person, I really do wanna be better, and I should have listened to you long before now, before I hurt you like I did, but...I’m gonna listen now.”

Janis doesn’t apologize much. She can’t even remember the last time she uttered the words “I’m sorry,” especially not to Damian. She’s taken his love for granted for so long…

Then Damian shifts in front of her, stepping forward slowly, and before Janis can react his hands are gently cupping her face, tilting her chin up slightly to meet his warm blue eyes, and she’s shocked to see no malice in them. All she sees is the world of love and light that he’s showered upon her, even when she’s at her absolute most unlovable. 

Her chest squeezes painfully and a small, gasping sob breaks from her lips, her eyes stinging as hot tears burn through her lashes. Immediately Damian gathers her into his arms, bending slightly to hold her broken pieces in their places. His warm lips press softly against her forehead and then he pulls her in, squeezing her tightly against his chest.

Janis lets her tears fall freely. She can’t find any value in holding them back any longer. Being strong made her weak. Now maybe being weak can make her strong.

Damian doesn’t speak. His arms encircle her tightly, and he doesn’t move or shift or change position at all. He just holds her, holds her as the minutes tick by, letting Janis cry out the pain she’s been holding and hoarding and hiding for years, without so much as a sigh. He knew, he knew way back before all this began, before Janis had even thought of Cady. Damian has been there long before Cady Heron and she knows implicitly from the way he holds her now that he will be there after. This is a friendship to last forever, proven by the mark of his forgiveness, and she was foolish to ever consider throwing it away.

She will always have Damian.


	23. Another Goodbye

Light streaming into her swollen, puffy eyes rouses Janis with the sun, Damian’s arms still loosely wrapped around her. As enticing as it is to curl back against him, relishing in his warmth and closeness, the clanging of pots over a fire and the rustling of her friends’ bodies rising from their makeshift beds on the hardened earthen floor draws her to wriggles out from under his arm, pausing only for one more moment hidden away from the world before blinking the sleep from her eyes. “It’s time, isn’t it?”

Crouched over the fire, Veronica tilts her chin up, and her dark eyes are filled with a surprising sorrow. “I’m afraid so, child. I have gathered all that I can give.”

“Thank you,” Janis says, and she means it. “For everything. We’ll come back after, okay? We’ll let you know when she’s gone.”

They fill their packs with the food Veronica has piled by the door for them, strips of dried meat and woven grass packages of plants. A quick breakfast of soup from the bubbling cauldron over the fire, and then far before Janis is ready, they’re standing by the door. As she shifts the straps of her pack, preparing to step out, Veronica catches her hand. “I wish you luck, love, and light. Whichever you may need.”

“All three sounds really good,” Janis jokes weakly, forcing a thin smile to her face. “I’m...I’m not ready.”

“Who has ever been ready for war?” Veronica asks lightly, gently cupping Janis’s face in the palm of her calloused hand. “But I think you’re readier than you know. And if you are not...then you are an intelligent, brave, beautiful young woman and it has been an honor to know you.”

Janis has to swallow hard at that, biting back a few rising tears at her words. “It - it’s been an honor to know you too. I hope...I hope I can come back.”

Veronica releases her wrist, taking a step back, and her brown eyes glisten with tears as she slowly moves away. “May we meet again in a better world.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Veronica’s words prove yet again true as the next three days pass without incident. In a hasty conversation whilst tromping through the woods, Janis fills Cady in on her night with Damian, explaining why he’s suddenly by her side once more. Now she walks with one hand in Cady’s and one in Damian’s, finally never alone.  
The comforting weight of a hand in each of hers is what gives Janis the strength to keep walking.

Words between them are few and far between, growing scarcer as they draw nearer to the Palace. They’re all afraid of dying in this fight. Janis can only dream of what the world will look like if they succeed. She can’t imagine herself ever seeing it.

She makes up her mind as she lays awake one night, curled in Damian’s arms. If it comes down to it, she’ll lay down her own life to save him or Cady. Her final chance to fully make amends. 

Three days pass quickly as Janis steels her resolve. Finally, they hack away the last of the brush growing over their path, and the briars fall away, light streaming into the swamp as they look out over the crest of a gentle slope, gazing at the Palace.

They may as well be on a different planet than the one of their little swamp village from whence they came. The city around the Palace gleams in the sun, polished marble walls surrounding the towering buildings like the fortifications of a citadel. Skyscrapers like the ones Janis remembers from old Chicago rise like giants, creating a stunning skyline set against the brilliant sun. And in the center of it all, the Palace rises at least thirteen stories, constructed from glowing white limestone. Defensive towers decorate every corner of the Palace, finely carved statues of Sin-Kana set on the high defensive walls. The whole city is set on a steeply sloped hill, white cobblestones leading to a massive iron gate, an army of guards standing before the formidable barrier.

Janis whistles appreciatively at the sight, shocked at the level of wealth Sin-Kana has managed to amass. “So...who wants to ask if we can pretty-please come on in?”

“Shut the fuck up, Janis,” Regina mumbles, staring in shock at the massive acropolis. “We’re Trojan-horsing this bitch.”


	24. Chapter 24

“That’s an unbelievably terrible plan.”

If Damian’s being pessimistic, all is lost. And Janis is inclined to agree. After hours of arguing, plotting, and referencing an endless array of Hollywood Trojan horses (Aaron would not shut up about the Monty Python rabbit,) what they’ve come up with is a plan so foolish even the ancient Trojans would have laughed their asses off at the thoughts.

But, Janis is forced to admit, it is indeed a plan. And that’s more than she can come up with.

Thorns scratch her arms as she crouches behind a bush, bent uncomfortably to fit her tall body behind the shrub. Damian and Aaron kneel beside her, in equally uncomfortable positions. As the three biggest members of the team, they were the ones elected to implement section one of the plan.

“How do we even know someone’s gonna come?” Janis whines a little, flinching as a twig pokes her in the eye. “We haven’t seen anyone!”

“Shh!” Aaron hisses, stomping on her crumbling boot. “If you get us caught, then you can be damn sure someone’s gonna come!”

As if summoned by their restlessness, booted feet thump towards them. At least three or four guards, maybe more. Janis tightens her grip on her knife, straightening as much as she can without blowing her cover to get ready.

Peering through a gap in the bush, Damian motions at them, holding up three fingers.  _ Three...two..one. _

As Damian brings down his last finger, the three of them spring out together, weapons at the ready. Janis lunges for the leader, smirking a little as his eyes widen in surprise as she thrusts her knife up through a chink in the breastplate of his armored vest. There’s only three in the patrol; Sin-Kana must be growing cocky in her resplendent palace.

Janis jerks her knife out in one rough motion, watching unflinchingly as the body crumples to the floor, crimson already soaking into the earth. On both sides of her, Damian and Aaron have dealt with the others in a similarly effective fashion, already beginning to strip the bodies of their armor. Gritting her teeth in disgust at the squelching of flesh as she tears out her knife, Janis shakes the blood spatters from the blade and tugs away the helmet, avoiding looking into the glassy eyes of her victim as she gathers the patterned armor.

“Well, you look fucking stupid,” Regina drawls, fingering her knife blade as she watches Janis wrangle the helmet onto her head. “You’re way too tall for that, you know.”

“You wanna take this job, be my guest,” Janis snarls, finally snapping the chin strap into place.  _ “Luke, I am your father… _ ”

Across the clearing, Damian snorts, buckling his own helmet. “I really do feel like a Sith Lord in this getup. God, she’s got a lot of people in there, but a halfway decent fashion designer  _ clearly  _ isn’t one of them.”

“Moving right past that,” Aaron cuts in breezily, adjusting his breastplate. “Let’s review one more time. Janis, Damian, and I walk in and open the gate for you three, you join us. Regina and I take the armory, Gretchen and Damian get Cady and Janis to the Palace, Cady guides Janis to Sin-Kana, and this all ends today. Any questions?”

“Yeah, what happens if it  _ doesn’t  _ go like that?” Janis asks, adjusting her knife so that it’s invisible from the outside. It’s not Chess Force standard, but she wants to kill Sin-Kana with her own weapon, bloody and up-close and meaningful, not quietly and distantly with whatever sleek metal device the soldier she took her armor from was carrying.

“Then we all die.”

“Right. That’s the part I don’t like so much.”

“Not thrilled about it either, Jan.” Aaron sheaths his own knife, placing a hand on Regina’s shoulder. “Stick with your assigned partner, don’t get separated. Try not to kill civilians if you can avoid it. We don’t want to spill any blood we don’t need to. If we survive and complete our missions, we’ll rendezvous here, hopefully with Sin-Kana’s head. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Janis promises, clasping Damian’s hand in one of her own and Cady’s in the other. “Let’s rock this bitch.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“This is nuts,” Janis mumbles to Damian as they march through the open gate. “Like absolute, batshit, Grade-A, wildass  _ bananas. _ ”

“Be a little more conspicuous, why don’t you?” Damian mumbles back, nudging her as subtly as he can. “Try not to look so amazed they let you in. You live here, remember?”

“In my wildest dreams, maybe,” Janis mutters, nodding to Aaron under her helmet. “You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Then go.”

As they’d rehearsed before taking the armor, Aaron slips away from them disappearing into the crowd. Janis takes a deep breath, silently counting down in her head.  _ 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… _

A crashing sound like nothing she’s ever heard before echoes through the square as Aaron “accidentally” tumbles into a merchant’s cart selling terra cotta pots, ceramics shattering on the hard cobblestones. As the crowd - and more critically, every Chess Force officer in the area - turns towards the source of the commotion, making its way over to investigate, Janis and Damian dive for the gate button, slamming down to open the shining gates.

And for once, everything goes right and there the others are, as armored as they could manage in scraped-up junk and metal scraps, charging in with their weapons as the gate falls open for them. Gretchen, dark hair flowing loose under her warped-saucepan helmet, and Cady, protected by a cookie sheet breastplate and a pair of rusty knives sharpened to a deadly edge on a boulder rush to their side. Cady’s hand slips into Janis’s, her fingers protected by a discarded pair of leather fingerless gloves, and Janis squeezes down hard before pulling Cady into the screaming and disoriented crowd.

There’s no going back now. Janis is probably going to die today. But she’ll die in the thick of battle, adrenaline in her veins and courage in her heart, beside the two people she loves most in the world. And on a planet ravaged by the apocalypse, that doesn’t sound too terrible of a way to go.

Armed with new courage and new vigor, Janis plunges into battle.


End file.
